25TH APRIL: DIGITAL WORLD DISCO SOUP DAY

Amid the corona crisis, Slow Food Youth Network invites the world to band together and join the fight against food waste and food insecurity

The Slow Food Youth Network (SFYN) is challenging everybody passionate about our earth to be an at-home food waste activist this weekend. From chefs and journalists to grandmas and school kids, SFYN wants everybody to take part in today’s digital World Disco Soup Day (WDSD). Hundreds of digital WDSD ‘hosts’ have already registered for Saturday, with chefs, celebrities, and passionate young people covering an amazing range of topics, techniques, cultures, and traditions that will be shared via live social media video streams. But this #WDSDchallenge, and this celebration of good food and diversity at a time of change, is open to anybody!

World Disco Soup Day in the current climate

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of food supply, food security, and accessibility to good, clean, and fair food have become more acute than ever. That’s why SFYN has canceled all public events and adapted their annual World Disco Soup Day to have an even wider, broader, and more global impact by going online. All throughout Saturday and across all time zones, thousands of people will be sharing stories, live videos, recipes, and performances from their own homes and kitchens. 

For example, SFYN groups in Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands are instead hosting their digital disco soups as a big party through Zoom, while some groups are staying active in their communities like SFYN USA, who are safely cooking and delivering meals for highly vulnerable community members who are unable to collect from the food shelf and SFYN Kenya who will deliver soups to neighbors in need as an act of community solidarity.

The format of a digital World Disco Soup Day

The #WDSDChallenge – which asks people to get five friends or followers to share their food waste, leftover, and funky veggie recipes or share information about food waste on social media – is open to everybody, from major media outlets and politicians to friends and family members. You don’t have to host a live video stream, either. Just sharing a post, photo, a recipe, or even a sign of support, is enough to be involved.

“It’s incredibly valuable that in times of a global pandemic, we join forces rather than sit at home waiting for this all to be over. Our generation doesn’t have time to wait, we have to act where we can and World Disco Soup Day might just be the most engaging way to do so,” Jorrit Kiewik, executive director of the Slow Food Youth Network.

Re-generation: enhancing understanding between youth and the elderly

In parallel with WDSD 2020, SFYN is continuing their #re_generation focus, encouraging young people to reach out to elderly relatives, neighbors, and community members via phone, Zoom, through care workers, or from a window, in order to gather recipes and traditional techniques that help to reduce or avoid food waste.

What people can do to be involved

• Share a post or photo, either cooking, talking about food waste, or explaining your elderlies’ traditional knowledge within your circle of influence;
• #WDSDchallenge five friends to do the same;

• Submit a recipe from your local elders to be featured in the WDSD cookbook. 

Disco Soup started 8 years ago in Berlin, Germany, as Schnippeldisko, a “protest soup” against food waste that fed 8,000 people. Since then, Disco Soup events have spread across the world as a fun, meaningful way to bring this crisis into focus. World Disco Soup Day has rescued over 50.000 kilograms of food so far. 

Happy World Disco Soup Day!