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Present:

• Various Lekkernassuh volunteers, Frederik (board), Cristien (core team; presenter), Liane (core team)
• Volkskeuken
• 7MRP
• Timebank CC
• The Conscious Kitchen

Absent:

• Sebastiaan (former market coordinator)
• Sytske and Eugene (board)

Opening

Cristien (Lekkernassuh Team communications) welcomes everyone. She explains the objective of the meeting is to keep eachother updated on the developments within Stichting Lokaal Voedsel Den Haag (LVDH) as a whole and the gym in particular, and within the various groups within Lekkernassuh and others who use the gym. Also, this is an opportunity for the groups to present any new ideas and to express the (growing) needs we have in terms of volunteers.

Cristien invites those who will present their groups to also express clearly what it is they need and want out of the people present and/or in terms of volunteers.

Board

On behalf of the board of Stichting Lokaal Voedsel and Lekkernassuh, Frederik (chairman of the board) tells a bit about the biggest theme at the moment: the purchase of the gym. This has been decided, but there still are some hills to climb before this will actually become a reality. Frederik specifically mentions the necassary permission from the municipality, with which Cristien and Liane are now helping out. Also more fundraising needs to be done. New groups may start coming in to use the gym; their activities should always be in line with the mission and vision of LVDH.

At the moment things are developing in a bit of an unstructured way according to Frederik, which is at the same time the power of LVDH/Lekkernassuh as there has always been a very organic growth of the activities and groups making use of the gym. Frederik mentions the roles of Sytske who is the secretary of the board and Eugene who is the treasurer and tackles any legal stuff.

Looking for:

-People interested in joining the board. Especially people with knowledge of finances, accounting and legal affairs. But also, he stresses, people with really just any capabilities who are willing to contribute to the foundation and it’s objectives.

Construction group

Liane is presenting the developments and needs within this group. She explains about the design process. At the moment there’s consensus on more or less what should become of the gym; an interesting process in which also neighbors were involved, along with Lekkernassuh members, the board and other stakeholders. The room should stay multi-purpose to facilitate a whole array of initiatives.

Right now, the group is looking into the possibilities of expanding the space in the building by constructing a floor; obtaining the necessary permits and funding.

Looking for:

• Creative ideas in the fields mentioned above as well as someone to structure the creative chaos;
• People to help cleaning the place. Specifically looking for 3 people to do deep cleaning once every 2 weeks;
• Furniture maker to implement the design that was made for the give-away store (Weggeefwinkel);
• BHV-ers / First aid volunteers;
• People to help out with construction jobs / klussers.

*Question by Thomas, Lekkernassuh-Webmaster: “Isnt there too much to take on just with volunteers?” Others agree, but on the other hand stress how much can be accomplished with people of good will, and that we should raise awareness that there are many more nice and fun tasks for people to take on, outside of helping with the market.

7MRP (7 missing rules productions!)

David-Jan introduces 7MRP as a no-barriers, cooperative and non-profit collective doing theatre workshops and productions using a cooperative “improvisation-to-script” approach. Their philosophy is that everyone should get the chance for creative expression and their activities should especially be fun! David-Jan pulls out a mask while explaining that in everyday life many people are wearing masks which they want to help them to let down and create social sustainability. 7MRP wants to be more present at the gym as well and contribute to building the community around LVDH.

Ideas/suggestions:

• Organise a murder-mystery dinner or other events that combine theater and culinary aspects;
• Produce performances (both as live acting and short movies) to communicate and spread awareness about LVDH’s / LVDH users’ missions and themes;
• Perform “unconventional” theatre pieces at the Gymzaal;
• Next workshop is on June 30, welcome!

Volkskeuken

Originally, Volkskeuken was created to offer inspiration on how to cook with the vegetables in the package, explains Liselot. Now it’s becoming more of a community kitchen. Still, it helps to fund the gym: the tables and chairs as well as the kitchen- and tableware are all paid by the revenues generated by Volkskeuken. They are open to all kinds of chefs, also for the (vegetarian) Wednesday dinners.

 Looking for:

• People who enjoy cooking and either want to help cooking for the dinners, or want to take over the kitchen as a chef for the day;
• Pop-up kitchens that want to use the facility. One idea was to start a fish restaurant one day a week;
• Volunteers who can help create more structure; plan; organize.

Conscious Kitchen

Anubhar and Minke represent the Conscious Kitchen, a student initiative that fights food waste. Every week they go to Haasge markt to ‘rescue’ food that would have been tossed out, and cook with it on thursdays. They also set up an initiative where Syrians receive Dutch language lessons. The idea is really to bring people, mainly students, together and to network as well. By working together around the (rescued) food: cooking, cleaning and doing dishes people come together.

The main channel for Conscious Kitchen is their Facebook page where food recovery actions are published as events, that people can sign up for.

Looking for:

-People to help recover food at the market, every wednesday around 17h. They expect a dip in volunteers around the summer as many of the (international) students that form the active base, will be returning home;

• People to join their core team;
• Open for collaboration with other groups/people with ideas to expand the current initiatives. E.g. processing bread they could get at the market and don’t have a destination for at the moment;
• They could use another bakfiets (to borrow) for the food recovery, and also on the wishist are more cutting boards (and plates&bowls > is there space in the kitchen Liselotte?!)

*A discussion evolves around the shared need for more volunteers that all froups and initiatives seem to experience alike. Frederik mentions a workshop by Fonds 1818 on how to find more volunteers. On 3 July they will have their next workshop, mark your calendars!

Lekkernassuh Market team

Mark as the market coordinator starts with a big thank you to the Conscious Kitchen for their positive input and energy! He stressed that everything in de gymzaal and also at the market is always about the people. The veggie package is about social interaction as well as the environment, so basically creating a utopia :). It’s a lot of fun!

This indeed was an introduction to his request for….. more volunteers :)!

Looking for:

• Help before and during the market on Wednesdays.

*Sara of Timebank raises the possibility of working with volunteer contracts to raise commitment. It works for Timebank. There’s mixed responses from the group (pro/against) and Cristina concludes it’s definitely something to discuss further at another moment.

* Something to keep in mind: all the groups together have a huge pool of volunteers that they are in touch with! The cooperation and exchange of needs is great because this way there will always be some job within one of the many groups that lights someones fire, no matter what group initially introduced them to the gym! We really want to activate this volunteer potential we sit on as a group!

Lekkernassuh Purchasing team

Loes is telling us more about the team that weekly buys the veggies. Until last December Sebastiaan was in charge of this, until he got a new job that left him too little time and Loes jumped in. She realised she really wanted to get some support and help and was able to find awesome support by Joni and Yvonne! Loes is delighted!

The challenges for Team Inkoop are now mainly the ongoing struggle to offer a diverse package in a country like the Netherlands; cabbage country, where naturally the vegetables of the season mostly dont include the popular tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc…

Looking for:

• People with cars and/or time to collect veggies on a regular basis, Wednesdays during the day;
• Someone mentions there’s a Greenwheels car in front of the door and suggests we should contaxct them for sponsoring, since there are more volunteers with a license than with a car….

*Thomas responds to a question: we’re at around 200 packages per week – that;s to say 200 people who are on ‘active’ but only around 85% ever comes collecting their package. A new rule was installed to manage the people who are not on active but who come along anyway: before they could always just pick up a package anyway but now those people are invited to wait till 18:45h and then can still gather a package if there are left.

Communications

Gea tells a bit about the varied tasks of the communications team: recurring jobs like posting the package; website maintenance, tweeting on the Lekkernassuh account and Facebook page moderation, but also coming up with creative ways to engage the current membership base as well as attracting new members through our online presence. Communication team members also create content like the ‘Faces of Lekkernassuh’ series and articles/texts. Team communications has recently welcomed Natasja as a new volunteer, and also Jenny joined us quite recently. Yay! The team is always looking for any creative/crazy/inventive ways to get the message of sustainable, local food across!

Looking for:

• Generally, your ideas on how to reach the existing/new members;
• Possibly another member who can especially take on ‘webdienst’ so the weekly website and social media postings and interaction (rotating schedule), preferably someone who speaks Dutch.

Timebank CC

Sara is there to finally explain to us what the CC stands for 🙂 : “community currency”. The idea behind Timebank is that any skill is rewarded not with the monetary value but just in hours. So an hour of gardening is valued as much as an hour of graphic design or cooking. Basically the members are all exchanging services with one another. This is creating a very inclusive system as everyone has something to contribute. Right now the focus within Timebnk is on food as a basic need in life. Already there are  monthly dinners, especially for the social aspect, but also now there are talks of how these idnners could in part be paid with time (accumulated elsewhere within the network).

Looking for:

• Nothing in particular; Sara just highlights an art project she is doing in Moerwijk that coming saturday (we hope it was a success!)

WRAP UP

Cristina then wraps up the presentations, that clearly highlighted the shared need/wish for more volunteers and also for people to help organize/structure the various groups and adds a little bit about the ongoing international research project Lekkernassuh is a part of, by Wageningen University & Research (WUR). The objectives of the LVDH foundation, which are also all reflected in the various initiatives using the gym, are the following:

• Experimenting with different value systems
• Experimenting with different forms of organization and
• Creating a systems change in the food chain

 SURPRISE 🙂

As announced on the programme, there was going to be a surpise…. except it turned out to still be a surprise in the making :). For a few weeks now, ideas have been gathered around the name of the gym. After a poll in whchi over 200 people voted, there now is a shortlist of three to five names that are being considered. Frederik is asking for input from those present, and some interesting (personal!) perspectives are shared:

• Any reference to Witte de With would be undesirable because of the colonial reference
• Gymnassuh is nice but too much linked with Lekkernassuh whereas the purpose of the gym is much broader
• We should find a middle road between a ‘boring’ name thats also easy and obvious and something catchy that also may be labelled ‘naive’ like Lekkernassuh
• No hypes. Words like ‘Lekker’ are allover the place now but in a few years will sound outdated.

And so now, the discussion must go on ;)!