Last week, the Bristol Anti-Slavery society hosted Student Restaurant in order to raise awareness of modern day slavery. Student Restaurant is a project run by FoodCycle, a non-profit organisation that is operated by setting up groups of volunteers to collect surplus produce locally and prepare nutritious meals in unused professional kitchen spaces, to serve the community.
The night was a great success as over fifty students descended on the Union for a hot, nutritious and cheap meal. It's incredible that approximately 1.3billion tonnes of food intended for human consumption gets lost or wasted each year. The Anti-Slavery team were astounded when we saw the amount of food collected by the FoodCycle team in just one day. There were mountains of bread, veggie curry and even extra doughnuts for dessert, all of which would have been simply thrown away.
Student Restaurant often asks different societies to 'host' for the night. It's a great platform to talk about different ethical and environmental issues with a wider section of the student population. It was a tad nerve-racking introducing the evening and the cause. Students tend to have varying levels of knowledge about modern day slavery and so we tried to tell them about Anti-Slavery International without being patronising.
After the main course we screened the 'Hell on Earth' DVD made by Anti-Slavery International. It was a great way to raise awareness about different forms of slavery. The DVD also managed to capture the audience's attention (partially because we turned it up to full volume) and people were really engaged, asking questions about the society.
We also managed to pass out some postcards for the 'Slavery-free London' Campaign and got loads of signatures. Some of the Anti-Slavery team even walked away with some luxury 'taste the difference' bread that wasn't even stale!
No doubt, we'd all love to work with FoodCycle again and we'd recommend setting up a similar activity in a university or community kitchen.
Amina Makele
Bristol University
