‘I’m currently a master student in sustainability (and I did a master’s in Media and Business before that) at the Erasmus University. I’m passionate about food and communication. Both my masters are very useful for me at GzG. I am coordinating the social media channels and I also can apply all my knowledge about sustainability and sustainable business to GzG.

I worked for two years in a network of sustainable shops in France which was selling unsold products. Here, I learned soooo much about the amount of food we waste every single year as human beings: 29kg of food per Dutch per year and 26kg in France!

In sustainability, what I like the most is to see that we can all have an impact. I very much believe in the little steps and that it is always possible to do something to reduce our impact on the planet. In a sense, we are in it together!

“What I like about GZG is to be able to have such an impact with so little resources”

My friend Ninarosa introduced me to the cooking dinners around November 2019, as she knows that I am passionate about food and really eager to save food waste while showing that plant-based food is easy, tasty and affordable. Since September 2020, I am coordinating social media and helping on several projects such as the cooking at SOL that we have been doing in the last few months. Besides, I also participated in the elaboration of a Recipe Book that we made with some students of Willem de Kooning.

What I love the most at GzG (apart from the delicious food) is to be able to have such an impact with so little resources. Our project is very much based on unsold food and the amazing energy of our volunteers. And the impact can be so great: helping transition to plant-based diet, fighting loneliness and food insecurity, limiting food waste… so for me, the greatest thing is just seeing people being brought together by our initiative: discussing with various people about topics which are dear to my heart.

Also, as social media coordinator, I love that we can inspire people even online, it is a good complement to the social dinners. They can pursue learning and change even online with our recipes or spotlight on different sustainable/plant-based places of Rotterdam.

In this time of pandemic, we are very much looking forward to restarting with our primary activity, social dinners.

But I am also very much looking forward to other small projects. For instance, we are working on a donation button on our website, so that people can help us out to get some food items that we cannot get from leftover products of the market.”