Soul Food

Mission: To expose migrant youth to cultural events and artistic environments, such as concerts, artist meet-and-greets, and museum visits, in an effort to provide intellectual and cultural stimulation, facilitate positive integration experiences and encourage novel levels of autonomy in their new home country. We work towards these goals with the hope that with each new cultural experience, migrant youth will not only make new friends and forget about their problems, but also feel like a part of French culture and life, instead of like someone who is watching from the outside.

Instead of attempting to force young migrants to forget their past and country of origin, we encourage them to discover French and European culture, and find their own level of balance between these. We show them that culture is not mutually exclusive. This is done partly by embarking on cultural excursions with fellow migrants, and sometimes French youth, creating safe spaces for open dialogue and opportunities to meet locals, and experience art, music and food as locals do.

Vision: Through our work, we help promote sustainable and positive integration within immigrant communities in France. We envision a France with museums, restaurants, theatres, and concert halls full of people from all over the world; not only tourists, but migrants and locals too. We also envision a world where migrants have this type of positive visibility, and not one where we only see them sleeping in tents in crowded cities and refugee camps.

Aims: We aim to help provide access to museums, theatres and other cultural places to migrants from all over the world. We also aim to fill in the excessive time gaps left by the French administration system, when migrant youth are not permitted to attend school, with intellectual and cultural stimulation through our excursions and activities.