In 2017, the LIFE Project began with a simple proposition: that we could leverage entrepreneurship and the shared language of food to build sustainable livelihoods and create lasting bonds between refugee and host communities. After three years of success stories like these, we are proud to fully transition the LIFE Project’s pilot program in Turkey to our in-country implementing partner.
Meet the Members: Ravan, a Syrian Entrepreneur Turning Community Ties into a Business Venture
Shortly after arriving in Turkey, Syrian entrepreneur Ravan Hudayfa started looking for opportunities to expand her network in the country and build new skills. She started volunteering with local community and youth programs, where she got to know the mothers of refugee children. Ravan quickly learned that many of these women were providing for their families by offering catering services out of their home kitchens. This inspired her to launch her catering business, Tina Zita.
Meet the Members: Rajaa, a Syrian Entrepreneur Expanding her Online Business to In-Person During COVID-19
As she was launching her website, the COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges for food businesses. Because her primary business was online, Rajaa was still able to operate - but not without difficulty. “While my website was doing well, the logistical issues of delivery were incredibly challenging,” she says. “I knew that in order for my website to really bloom, I had to unite my staff under one roof and have the delivery process start from one point on the map instead of multiple locations.”
From Family Traditions to Home Kitchens: The Cuisine of LIFE
Alaa Alarori, Co-Editor of The Cuisine of LIFE: Recipes and Stories of the New Food Entrepreneurs of Turkey, writes about the process of transforming 58 unique dishes into recipes that can be replicated by home cooks around the world.
Note: This post originally appeared on ckbk. ckbk members can access every recipe from The Cuisine of Life via the ckbk website and app.
“You are my guests today,” said Sawsan Bawadekji, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen of the LIFE Project’s Food Enterprise Center (FEC) in Istanbul to test one of her recipes. To Sawsan, a cook born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, and the other 23 contributing members, participating in The Cuisine of Life: Recipes and Stories of the New Food Entrepreneurs of Turkey is a matter of hospitality, pride, and preserving a cultural heritage. Through this cookbook, LIFE Project members take the reader on a journey to appreciate the historical depth of their dishes and experience the stories of those who carried them across towns and countries.
Sawsan prepares Safarjaliyeh, quince and lamb stew, featured in the Cuisine of LIFE cookbook
The Livelihoods Innovation through Food Entrepreneurship (LIFE) Project is a food business incubator with a mission to support entrepreneurship, job creation, and cross-cultural engagement among refugees and host communities in the food sector in Turkey. The LIFE Project supports ambitious food entrepreneurs at every stage of their business journey and helps them build cross-cultural networks. Through the shared language of food, the LIFE Project brings people closer and promotes a sense of understanding, compassion and unity between communities. And this is where The Cuisine of Life’s story begins.
How the Cookbook Project Got its Start
The LIFE Project team started planning and making preparations for a cookbook in early August 2018. We hit our first obstacle early in the planning phase when we realized the contributing members were single-language speakers, either Arabic or Turkish, and the cookbook was to be published in English! We decided to translate original recipes, notes, and commentary into English at every stage of the development process. Whether written or verbal, everything was translated to ensure the contributing members remained engaged at every step, and that the final product represented their unique voices accurately. It was a huge effort, but it paid off.
We kicked off the development of The Cuisine of Life by inviting LIFE Project members to propose dishes for the cookbook in a meeting with me, a Syrian national, and my fellow co-editor Filiz Hosukoglu, a Turkish national. We chose the dishes based on diversity, authenticity, universality, and most importantly, the stories they told.
From there, the adventure truly began.
Pulling it All Together
The members would send the recipes in writing, alongside stories about the dishes and their own personal journeys in their mother tongue. I would send the ingredients, in Turkish, to the kitchen staff for preparation and send the recipe and stories to my fellow co-editor, in English.
Alaa shows off the final product at the cookbook launch event in Istanbul.
The members then joined us in the kitchen, cooking the recipes as they do in their own homes or business kitchens. We took on the monumental task of translating the family traditions and unique methods of individual members into recipes that home cooks around the world could replicate, checking the ingredients, steps and quantities against the written recipe to make sure the written instructions captured all of the details and reflected the original recipes.
Going through this step, we realized that writing down a recipe is not something one does often and it’s more challenging than it looks. Think of how your mother or grandmother would teach you how to cook a dish: the conversation would sound something like “add a sprinkle of this, and a dash of that, and eyeball the quantity of those.” Also, sometimes ingredients differ and the experienced chef would improvise tricks to make the best out of the ingredients at hand. Many of the written recipes were not comprehensive enough to replicate, missing several steps which would have been assumed in their community of origin but not widely known to cooks around the world. It was the editors’ responsibility to capture all missing steps and describe them in a detailed manner.
My most joyful moments were when a member was doing something that did not require close attention and we could ask them questions about their life. We learned about their childhood, how they learned cooking and from whom, their fondest memories around the dinner table, and other topics. Those talks were priceless, and many were captured in the cookbook.
The Story Develops
One of my favorite stories was Maysaa’s. When she got married at the age of 18 and moved to Saudi Arabia, international calls were expensive and limited. To stay connected with her family, her mom wrote her a little cookbook of her own recipes and packed it with her limited luggage. Maysaa’s story reminded me that a recipe can migrate from one generation to another, one country to another, but help us stay connected to home.
Maysaa prepares one of her signature recipes in the LIFE Kitchen.
After the test period, the recipes and stories were carefully translated back into the original language and sent to the members for review. Many members made revisions and those needed to be checked and verified.
After months of testing, reviewing, and translating, we wanted to make sure all recipes in the cookbook were replicable and accurate. To do this, we collaborated with The Culinary Arts Academy (Mutfak Sanatları Akademisi, or MSA), one of the most prestigious cooking schools in Turkey. The head chef Cem Erol and his team cooked the dishes without any guidance from us, using only the written recipes and a couple of photos just as cookbook readers would. The MSA team took their own photos, which were then sent to members for them to review, check for any inconsistencies, or make improvements. The MSA team repeatedly and patiently cooked the dishes, following the provided recipes and adding their culinary expertise, and calibrated the ingredients to produce a balanced and universally acceptable taste.
After cooking the dishes multiple times (sometimes as many as ten!), we shared the revised recipes, now including MSA’s input, back to the members for their approval on the final product.
The Home Stretch
At this time, the recipes were ready to be cooked for the last time and photographed while still fresh. Cookbook contributors and the MSA crew prepared the recipes together and the images you see in the book are the result of that seamless collaboration. “During the development of The Cuisine of Life, the members became the chefs and we became the students,” MSA head Chef Cem Erol said in an interview towards the end of the cookbook development. He and his team lived his words. They were attentive, accurate, organized and accommodating.
The cookbook is a culmination of these efforts – translating, editing, learning, indexing, copy-editing, and verifying again and again to ensure we captured the essence of the dish, and of the member who shared it. My fellow co-editor Johanna Mendelson Forman, also gave valuable insight and, along with Filiz, collected contributions from celebrity chefs and gastronomy experts from all over the world to add to the cookbook. After this enormous and truly collaborative effort, it was ready for publication.
Contributing members celebrate their hard work at the cookbook launch event at MSA Istanbul
The Culmination
In February 2020 – 18 months since the beginning of the project – I was standing before an audience of the contributing members, their friends and families, the MSA team, and LIFE Project supporters announcing the launch of The Cuisine of Life. We celebrated together as a family, enjoying some of the very recipes included in the cookbook and signing the cookbook as one author. Arabs and Turks were exchanging conversation and laughing without even knowing each others’ languages.
The feelings of excitement, pride and accomplishment were obvious on their faces. For me it was a true moment of relief, satisfaction and gratefulness knowing that strangers around the world would soon share this experience in their own kitchens as they too became “our guests.”
Expert Insights: Quick Tips on Food Entrepreneurship from Cullen Gilchrist, CEO and Founder of Union Kitchen
Meet the Members: Manar, a Syrian Entrepreneur Reinventing a Family Business from Home
Meet the Members: Ahmad, a Syrian Entrepreneur Discovering His Business Instincts
Originally from Palmyra, Syria, 28-year-old Ahmad graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Hama. When he came to Turkey, he looked for employment first in Istanbul and then in Mersin, but found few opportunities in either city. Instead he turned his focus toward his dream of starting a new business.
Meet the Members: Emel, a Turkish Entrepreneur Expanding Her 25-Year Business Journey
Born and raised in Mersin, Turkish entrepreneur Emel initially started her business journey studying Business Management, but was unable to complete her degree. Instead, she started working for a logistics company where she worked long, consuming hours. The idea of running her own business was becoming more attractive by the day, and after losing her job because of the Gulf crisis in the 90s, she decided to pursue that goal.
Cookbook Launch Event with Immigrant Food and the Center for International Private Enterprise
On July 9, 2020, Consortium lead The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and Immigrant Food hosted a virtual launch event for the LIFE Project cookbook The Cuisine of LIFE: Recipes and Stories of the New Food Entrepreneurs of Turkey. Tea Ivanovic, Communications and Outreach Director at Immigrant Food, and Marie Principe, Program Officer at CIPE, provided opening remarks.
LIFE Project Hosts First Virtual Business Pitch Competition
When LIFE Entrepreneurs graduate from the intensive Food Entrepreneurship Incubator, they have the opportunity to share their business ideas with industry experts and compete for seed funding during a Business Pitch Competition. While competitions are usually held at the LIFE Project’s Food Enterprise Centers in Istanbul and Mersin, safety measures from COVID-19 prevented the usual in-person competitions from taking place.
Instead, the LIFE Project hosted the first-ever Virtual Business Pitch Competition. Members received video production and business pitch training before recording their pitches and sharing them with a panel of expert judges. The panel selected 16 entrepreneurs from the cohorts in Istanbul and Mersin as finalists, and three businesses from each cohort received seed funding to start or scale their venture.
Interested in learning more about the winning businesses or connecting with the entrepreneurs behind them? Contact us at lifeproject@cipe.org.
Virtual Pitch Competition Winners
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Finalists
Istanbul Cohort Winners
Aya Anani: “Crave Home”
Aya, a Lebanese entrepreneur, plans to expand her food delivery platform that connects customers with home cooks.
Nevra Aslantürk and Kenan Kahya: “Mahalleden”
Turkish entrepreneurs Nevra and Kenan launched a community-based food sharing platform focused on strengthening social ties while increasing access to healthy food.
Selin Ergene and Emine Sibel Sakarya: “Real food”
After seeing how office workers’ diets of unhealthy comfort foods can lead to negative health effects, Turkish entrepreneurs Selin and Emine decided to create a food truck that offers healthy fast food options to office employees.
Mersin Cohort Winners
Ahmad Kashaam: date syrup production
Originally from Palmyra, Syria, Ahmad pitched his idea to market date syrup - which his home city is famous for - as an affordable alternative to sugar for people with restricted diets including diabetics and athletes.
Emel Sanli: fresh baby food
Turkish entrepreneur Emel plans to build on her experience in food production by starting a new business focused on fresh, nutritional baby food and family staples.
Manar Al-Salam: fresh dairy products
Syrian entrepreneur Manar will use the seed funding she received to open a shop for her home-based business producing additive-free dairy products.
Finalists
Ayşegül Erdoğan and Özlem Aydalga (Istanbul): “Anne Eli”
Serpil Demir (Mersin): Kaynar Cafe
Fatime Yaruk (Mersin): “Şam Şifa”
Nour Eddin Zalamtani (Istanbul): “Our World Project”
Resilience and Resourcefulness: Entrepreneurial Success in Times of Crisis
As the world adapts to social distancing measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, businesses and entrepreneurs have made crucial changes to ensure long-term sustainability. The latest event hosted by the LIFE Project with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), highlighted the challenges and opportunities that small business owners and entrepreneurs experience in times of crisis.
Meet the Members: Zeinab, Bringing a Family Legacy from Syria to Turkey
Name: Zeinab Wazzan
Business: Cosmetic and Food-Enhancing Plant Extract
LIFE Cohort: 1st Cohort, Mersin
Home Country: Syria
Originally from Latakia, Syria, Zeinab studied fine arts and taught painting. Her father and uncle were well known Attars, people who extract natural essence from flowers and plants for health benefits. As a child, she was fascinated by how her father extracted flower essence: “We had a garden with lemon trees and we would gather the flowers of the lemon tree together to extract the essence [...] After he passed away, I carried on and started first distributing bottles of plant extracts in his honor, as he would have done if he was alive. I then started selling them and generating revenue.” Identifying a lucrative business venture, Zeinab started producing flower essence to sell for health benefits and food flavoring and sold bottles in her uncle’s shop in Latakia’s Hanano street.
When the war broke out in Syria, Zeinab moved first to Antakya and then to Mersin. She was immediately attracted to the flowers there. “After some doing market research, I learned that in Mersin, and Turkey in general, the essence of flowers is not extracted in a natural way- it is just for commercial use and it is not natural at all.” Realizing that there was an opportunity in the Turkish market for natural flower extracts, Zeinab coordinated the retrieval of the machine she used in Latakia to extract the essence of plants. With the machine and flowers imported from Syria, she began her business and is doing well, “A month ago, a merchant from Latakia bought all my flower essence bottles to export them to the Netherlands.”
After graduating from the first cohort in Mersin, Zeinab reflected on her experience in the LIFE Project incubation program: “My experience in [the LIFE Project] was very positive. I was introduced to many people and specifically benefited from the training related to the techniques for pitching my business.” As one of the winner’s of the first business competition in Mersin, Zeinab plans to use the seed funding she received to buy two more machines to increase production. She is planning to partner with fellow LIFE members to develop her business and offer them income generating opportunities. “I dream of having my product with my own name,” she says.
UPDATE June 2020: After sharing her product with “Tea’n Cake,” a cafe located in one of Mersin’s largest shopping centers, Zeinab now supplies her rose water and other extracts to the cafe.
Are you interested in Zeinab’s story or see potential in her business as an investor? Reach out to her directly: @rose_water3.
Democracy That Delivers #211: Entrepreneurial Success in Times of Crisis with Osman Cakiroglu
From Consortium lead The Center for International Private Enterprise
Osman Cakiroglu, Project Director of the LIFE Project, joins host Ken Jaques to discuss the new ways the program is helping local entrepreneurs in Turkey impacted by the global pandemic. They also discuss the upcoming CIPE event with the consortium partners (register here) and the exciting launch of the LIFE Project Cookbook that is now available for purchase. All proceeds of the cookbook will go towards the LIFE Project.
Keeping Food on the Table During COVID-19: How Refugee Entrepreneurs Have Stayed Afloat – and Thrown a Lifeline to Others
The COVID-19 crisis has hit the food sector particularly hard, upending traditional business models and disrupting supply chains. The challenges facing these businesses have far-reaching implications – not only for the enterprises themselves, but also for the people they supply with food during the pandemic-induced lockdown. Fortunately, many of these businesses are responding to these disruptions with creativity and innovation, enabling them to continue delivering food, maintaining supply chains, supporting workers’ livelihoods – and helping to feed society during these unprecedented times.
Transitioning to a Virtual Environment Through Innovative Support Services
When the Food Enterprise Centers (FECs) closed in March due to COVID-19 safety measures, the LIFE Project had to reimagine what successful entrepreneurship incubation and building social cohesion should look like in this new environment. Over the last few weeks, the LIFE Project made substantial adjustments to support members virtually and provide timely resources to meet new and ongoing challenges.
LIFE Entrepreneurs Working Through Adversity During COVID-19
With COVID-19 creating unprecedented challenges for the food industry, LIFE entrepreneurs from refugee and host communities alike face a daunting question: how can they pivot their business plans to overcome these challenges and find success in this new environment? With the support of LIFE Project virtual programs, members quickly adapted to these new circumstances.
Democracy That Delivers #200: The LIFE Project Cookbook
From Consortium lead The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)
We celebrate Democracy That Deliver’s 200th podcast with a special episode just in time for Giving Tuesday 2020. We are joined by CIPE’s Marie Principe and the Stimson Center’s Johanna Mendelson-Forman for a behind the scenes look at CIPE’s very first cookbook “The Cuisine of LIFE” – now available for purchase online.
Meet the Members: Devrim and Mohammed
After working in corporate marketing for 15 years, Turkish LIFE Entrepreneur Devrim started looking for new areas where she could use her skills and knowledge. Now, she is building a fresh food production business to provide healthy versions of everyday staples. The LIFE Project Entrepreneurship Incubator helped her develop her business model and product.
Syrian LIFE Entrepreneur Mohammed is an electrical engineer from Damascus. When he moved to Turkey, he had no experience or connections and had trouble finding a job in his field due to language barriers. He started making Syrian-style homemade cheese and sharing it with his neighbors. With the help of the LIFE Project, he built the skills and knowledge to develop cheese products for the Turkish market.
Meet the Members: Feryal and Nedal
Turkish LIFE Entrepreneur Feryal started her healthy snack brand fistik.co after retiring from the banking sector. Already involved in running and sports, she saw an opportunity to sell her product at stands during jogging events. With the support of the LIFE Project, she was able to expand her professional network and customer base.
23-year-old LIFE Entrepreneur Nedal came to Istanbul from Syria almost four years ago. He quickly discovered he had a passion for working in the dessert sector and became the main chef for a Turkish sweets company. Now, Nedal is utilizing the LIFE Project's business support services while developing his own project in the dessert sector.
Meet the Members: Inam and Nadide
Back in Damascus, Syrian LIFE Entrepreneur Inam was a housewife. After coming to Istanbul, she turned her 20 years of experience cooking at home into a catering business. Through the LIFE Project Entrepreneurship Incubator, she honed her cooking skills and also built the knowledge she needed to navigate the Turkish market and legal system.
Turkish LIFE Entrepreneur Nadide has been working in the food industry for 20 years. Today she is launching a food business venture centered around her ancestral sourdough and a belief in the importance of good nutrition. The LIFE Project helped her build a professional network and gain new confidence in her vision.