The Ovens for Peace program is now evolving in Bulgaria with the mission to transform old military ovens (metal trailers moved and used for cooking and baking) and turn them into movable wood-fired ovens to be taken to refugee camps, Roma ghetto areas, and socially marginalized institutions such as orphanages, elderly people’s homes, etc.
We are currently fundraising for the remodeling of the ovens, and the mobile ovens can in the future be scaled up to a network of local social enterprises, which could particularly make use of the easily movable construction of the prototype used for the Mobile Bread House. These social enterprises could then be adapted to individual, local realities.
For this initiative, we already managed to fundraise 1000 USD through the Bulgaria-Romania charitable marathon, as the Ovens for Peace was listed as one of the 6 national Bulgarian projects. (see more at http://1000balkan.com/en/
Help us to fill some of the saddest parts of Bulgaria with joy, compassion and the smell of warm bread!
We have already had very successful bread-making events with refugees, in both mixed age and gender groups, and mainly with women, under our program “Ovens for Peace”, and we can expand this to a structured training in social entrepreneurship. In addition to the economic potential of bread making, women were especially touched by the shared experience of bread-making with locals, because bread made them think of home, and they shared that they really felt a home-like atmosphere, now that they had lost their homes and families and have to find strength to rebuild their lives in a new country.
To develop our work with refugees we cooperate with the bulgarian organizations Multi Kulti Collective and the Council of refugee women in Bulgaria. In the Sofia Bread House there are regular bread making events for children and adults who are refugees and migrants from Syria, Irak, Jemen and Afganistan.They exchange not only bread recipies and traditions, but also the stories of their lives and what has brought them to the present moment.
In May 2017 the Bread Houses Network participated in a Solidarity Festival, organized by our partners from Multi Kulti Collective, aiming at celebrating solidarity through arts, music, food and discussions. During this joyful event, we presented our methods and made bread with people from different countries, ethnicities and backgrounds.
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