Materials for Activity

• Serving table(s) and tables with chairs
• Tablecloths, napkins, plates, cups and eating utensils
• Index cards and pens or markers
• A variety of foods that participants will bring from home

Preparation for Activity

• Coordinate a date for the heritage feast. Get permission to use a space with tables, chairs and access to a kitchen.
• Assign one or more co-leaders or other adult volunteers to coordinate food assignments, serving and clean-up. You might engage Faithful Journeys participants and their families to help with setup and clean-up.
• Announce time, date, and location of heritage feast. Provide instructions on what kinds of food to bring and when and where to bring it.
• Optional: If this event will be a fundraiser, plan how and when donations will be collected.

Description of Activity

One enjoyable way to celebrate world community is to honor the contributions of different countries through food. A heritage feast invites participants to celebrate their ancestry by sharing a dish they associate with their family's country (or countries) of origin. This activity could be a fundraiser for the congregation's partner church; for Project Harvest Hope, which supports sustainable development in Transylvanian villages; or for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which partners with organizations around the world to confront injustice and provide for basic needs. Fundraising possibilities for this project might be a donation basket, an auction of particular special dishes, or a request for each participant to contribute financially as well as bringing food to share.

You might ask participants in advance to bring a copy of the recipe for their special food, with the name of the dish and the country or culture it represents.

Including All Participants

Make sure to include participants whose birth families and adoptive families are each from different countries or cultures, by asking people to bring a dish representative of "your family's or your children's birth family's country of origin."

Listing ingredients on the cards that label each dish will allow people with food allergies or restrictions to avoid foods they cannot eat.