What challenge inspired this recipe?
Many grocery stores include information about products or have signs in the stores only in the local language, making purchasing right products difficult for volunteers. In addition, every country has its specific foods and grocery products and for people who don’t know the culture it may be confusing.
For culturally specific products translation isn’t enough and more information is needed. Also every country may have specific shops or supermarket chains. Incoming volunteers who are not familiar with these and also have a tight budget, so they would highly benefit from tips for grocery shopping to avoid purchasing different products than they intended
Ingredients :
You can make a presentation, but it is not necessary. A list of common foods in the local language translated to English can be helpful which the volunteers can take with them to the grocery store.
Step by step guide
Tell the volunteers about grocery shops in your country/city and explain how they differ, which ones are cheaper/more expensive. If there are some products specific for your country, explain what they are and how to use them.
Here is an example: https://particularpantry.com/grocery-shopping-in-a-foreign-country/
You can accompany the volunteers to grocery shopping during their first days of the project, since they may have some questions. Long term volunteers who have arrived in the country before the new volunteers and hence already have some experience in this area can also help in this. Moreover, they can provide peer support by telling some stories of times when they purchased a product different to what they intended.
Important to highlight!Some constraints of implementing this best practice may be that the project is in a rural area, so there are less options for foods, or the meals are already provided by the hosting organization. |
Before you start cooking, keep in mind…
To conclude, providing grocery shopping tips can help volunteers to save money and avoid food waste as they don’t make wrong purchases accidentally. This also helps the volunteers to feel more familiar in the new country faster.
Possible upgrade is making an info sheet/infographic.
