This article was first published in the September 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Can cookery lessons be the salvation of São Paulo's favelas and ultra-tough women's prisons? Brazilian chef David Hertz is building a food-education network to prove that cooking can be transformative. He's the founder of Gastromotiva, which teaches favela residents to cook, and then to train others -- boosting work opportunities as well as their self-respect.
Hertz, 41, left Brazil to travel for seven years when he was 19. He returned with a passion for food. "Gastronomy became my guideline," he says. He trained to be a chef - and realised that food could bring people together in socially beneficial ways. "I visited a favela and thought: what if, through cooking, the residents could become what they're meant to be? By interacting with others through cooking, you learn confidence, discipline and collaboration. I call it social gastronomy."
Hertz set up Gastromotiva to offer free culinary programmes for disadvantaged youths. It has trained 1,200, many of them now cooks working in Brazil's restaurants, and who in turn are encouraged to go back to their communities and train others. Gastromotiva is also incubating food businesses inside the favelas of São Paulo. "My first trainee has a catering business that employs 20 people," Hertz says.
The movement is about to go into its fourth Brazilian city, with 25 full-time staff and around 50 part-time, funded by grants and restaurant revenue. Next up: expanding the movement to Venezuela. "Our goal is to reach more than 50,000 people in workshops that multiply our methodology in low-income communities," the TED Fellow says. "We've trained prisoners and jobless immigrants. These people who never had a say now have a voice."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
