VEREIN COOLINARIK
Co-creative cooking as societal glue.
Social Supper Club
The Social Supper Club (SSC) organizes transcultural cooking workshops that bring together people from different backgrounds and generations. Each workshop concludes with community pop-ups where participants cook, share, and celebrate together.
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The project is active in Bern, Zurich, and Fribourg and is expanding across multiple cantons. Partners and supporters include ORS, Caritas, AOZ, cantonal integration services, and Mercato Bio.
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SSC is an ongoing initiative that fosters connection, exchange, and cultural diversity through shared cooking experiences.
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A Table That Connects
The Social Supper Club is a community project by COOLINARIK. Young people, seniors and refugees come together to create a public dinner.
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One evening.
One team.
One shared goal.
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What emerges is more than a dinner. It is connection.
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Why This Project Matters
Loneliness affects different generations in different ways. Young people search for direction. Seniors lose social connections. Refugees rebuild their lives in a new country.
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The Social Supper Club intentionally brings these three groups together.
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Not as a support program.
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But as a shared project.
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When people cook, plan, decide and take responsibility together, trust grows. Participants experience themselves not as a “group with a problem,” but as a team with a purpose.
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This is how social integration becomes real and tangible.
Integration Through Shared Action
At the Social Supper Club, people from different generations and backgrounds collaborate on equal terms. Everyone contributes something: experience, energy, culture, knowledge.
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Young people gain perspective and new role models.
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Seniors contribute stability and life experience.
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Refugees become visible as active co-creators.
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Relationships form beyond the evening. New networks. New conversations. A new sense of belonging.
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Real Opportunities for Professional Pathways
The Social Supper Club connects social encounter with real opportunities.
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Through partnerships with restaurants, food production companies and agricultural partners, direct access to the job market is created.
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Refugee participants demonstrate their skills in practice. Businesses get to know motivated individuals in action. This can lead to internships, assignments or further professional conversations.
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A community dinner becomes a bridge to employment.
A Growing, Self-Sustaining Model
The Social Supper Club is designed as a social start-up. The goal is to become largely self-sustaining within two years.
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Pop-up dinners, business partnerships and volunteer engagement from former participants contribute to long-term financing. The model can be expanded to other regions.
The Social Supper Club stands for connection instead of isolation.
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Collaboration instead of separation.
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And real opportunities through shared action.
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Interested in joining or hosting a Social Supper Club?
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Get in touch with us.
By scanning this QR code, you can make a donation and support our projects. Every contribution makes a difference — thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
