Food and Friendship
Our award-winning Interfaith Shared Meal Project ‘Food and Friendship’ brings together WIN’s members from all faiths and none with migrant and refugee communities, to share food, swap stories, and make new connections. We believe sharing food creates an atmosphere of intimacy: opening up conversations, breaking down barriers, and promoting meaningful relationship building between communities. With religious hate crime and anti-migrant rhetoric on the rise, these events offer much needed safe spaces to celebrate and embrace our differences, in the spirit of welcome and sanctuary.This project was first developed in response to the backlog in the UK asylum system, leaving thousands of women and children stuck living long-term in what was designed to be temporary hotel accommodation, without security, meaningful community or even a place to play or eat together.
In 2023, we launched Food and Friendship as a pilot with Westminster-based charity Unfold, who run support groups for women seeking asylum in the borough. Our launch event in July 2023 hosted over 60 attendees from WIN and Unfold’s Women’s Support Groups, with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu women alongside women of no faith, enjoying 15 different dishes from different cultures and traditions. Activities were provided for the children and Gants Hill WIN Chair Dr. Sudarshan Kapur MBE led a laughter yoga session for all attendees.
In Interfaith Week 2024, we brought Food and Friendship to Waltham Forest with support from our local WIN group and Waltham Forest Migrant Action. In Interfaith Week 2025, we partnered with Stories and Supper on a ‘Story Café’ event, funded and supported by Waltham Forest Council’s Fellowship Fund. These events are women-led, but free and open to everyone in the community.
Food and Friendship was recognised in the 2025 London Dangoor Awards with an award for our work on Interfaith Relations.
We’re currently working on a new programme of Food and Friendship events for 2026-2027, so watch this space or get in touch to get involved!