Over the years, the activities of the Food for Life Foundation have become increasingly complex and diverse, and we provide charitable assistance to an ever-wider range of groups (large families, children in child welfare institutions, homeless people, etc.). Our wide-ranging projects allow the students and volunteers who come to us to get involved in a variety of activities and gain as broad a range of experiences as possible.

As part of the „Pizza Effect” educational program organized by the Food for Life Foundation, our national dissemination meeting was held on March 7, 2015. This event was attended by staff members from all of our Foundation’s offices in Budapest and throughout the country (Pécs, Eger, Debrecen, Somogyvámos), as well as many volunteers who have been enthusiastically supporting the success of our mission for years.

In addition to colleagues and volunteers, students involved in the „Pizza Effect” program who had participated in international partnership meetings and exchanges also attended. We designed the meeting’s program to allow for a joint, group review of the project’s results to date and to begin adapting what had been learned within the framework of the project. In addition to practical knowledge, we sought to impart a certain mindset to the participants—one that, in the long term, will help ensure that our staff, volunteers, and supporters into citizens who are sensitive to social issues, active, committed to their communities, representative of European values, and capable of conscious action.

During the first part of the meeting, there was a brief summary of the Foundation’s 1.5 decades of persistent efforts to provide meals to the poor and its social activities, as well as all the results to date of the „Pizza Effect” educational program, to which each participant contributed their own personal accounts and experiences during the joint evaluation, and described what knowledge and skills they had gained through their participation in the project and how this had impacted their daily work and activities. The discussion then turned to the partnership meetings and training programs to be held until the project’s conclusion, the broader dissemination of the project’s results, and the related tasks.

Following that, in the second part of the event, we held an interactive, playful team-building and skills-development training session, during which our volunteers—who come from diverse social backgrounds, are in different life situations, and play various roles in the Foundation’s day-to-day activities— and staff members—all of whom are involved in the Foundation’s activities—had the opportunity to get to know one another better and share their experiences.

During the team-building training, we covered topics such as communication and presentation skills, team building, recruitment, motivation, improvisation skills, creativity, moderation and facilitation, and feedback. We approached each topic with playful, hands-on exercises, and then moved toward a theoretical summary by discussing our experiences.

During the training session, which was conducted using informal learning methods, colleagues and other learners were able to acquire the skills needed to support their daily work and volunteer activities more effectively than if we had simply seated them at desks to study. Teaching in the form of playful competitions produced surprisingly quick and positive results, while a lively and enthusiastic atmosphere prevailed throughout the entire session. During the games, numerous issues and challenges related to day-to-day collaboration and support activities came to light—problems that had not been identified during formal meetings or work discussions— thereby creating opportunities to deepen collaboration and make teamwork more effective in the future.

It was a gathering filled with an exceptionally good atmosphere, the likes of which the Foundation had never experienced before. That is precisely why it had such an inspiring effect on both colleagues and volunteers, who expressed their desire right there on the spot to see more such joint programs and training sessions organized in the future.

And as part of the „Pizza Effect” program, all that hard work was followed by nothing less than a huge vegetarian pizza party with an equally fantastic atmosphere!

A wonderful, long-term outcome of the project is that among staff members working in different parts of the country, as well as volunteers and supporters from diverse backgrounds who fulfill different roles in the Foundation’s work, are developing a stronger spirit of collaboration; they are becoming more open to getting to know one another, learning about new perspectives and methods, and adapting international best practices. As the project participants also expressed during the event, they urge us to spend more time together and have more opportunities to share experiences, because these help maintain their enthusiasm, and inspire even more people to support the Foundation’s work in some way, or even just to begin thinking more deeply about social issues or the potential of collaboration. In this way, we can change the lives of even more people living in poverty and social exclusion who are in need of help, and provide them with a point of connection and support to help them reintegrate into society.

„Human life is short, but if during this short life we can do something that enhances our good reputation, it can last for millions and millions of years.” Csánakja Pandit