Our products
My Culture My Cookbook
My Culture My Cookbook
My Culture My Cookbook
Food and cooking can connect us to our culture, our heritage and give comforting memories of home. But there are few opportunities for the women seeking asylum that are living in hotels to cook for themselves or enjoy traditional food.
People seeking asylum housed in accommodation such as hotels under Section 4 of the Home Office regulations receive only £8.24 per week, along with basic food and toiletries. The food in hotels is often processed, unhealthy and lacking in variety, made worse by the cost of living crisis.
To counteract this WAST and Afrocats received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund so women in the WAST network could spend 12 weeks cooking together. The project aimed to give the women agency and importantly introduce healthy variety into their diets.
My Culture My Cookbook, a recipe book with dishes from Iraq to the Congo and Syria to Namibia. Many of the recipes are made from memory, handed down from grandmother to mother and to daughter.
£20 + pp
Listen to Our Voices
Listen to Our Voices
Listen to our voices
In this book WAST women present poetry and stories that they have written. `the women express memories of their past life, and write accounts of their present experiences.
They write with both nostalgia and memory from suffering about their countries of origin. They describe what it is like to be a woman in countries where women have no freedom or rights and often are the victims of domestic abuse.
Past, Present, Future
Past, Present, Future
Past, Present, Future
This collection represents work written by members of a writing class held at WAST between 2010 and 2013. The class grew out of some English language classes when our volunteer tutors learnt that many of the WAST members had learnt good colloquial English quite quickly but had little experience in or opportunity for writing.
“This is a remarkable book. The women who write in it were terrorised in their countries of origin and then silenced in the windowless world of the UK asylum system. But here, in these pages, they give voice… Take this book home and marvel, as I did, at the achievements of the women whose resilience and humanity brought it into being.”
Juliet Stevenson
“WAST continues to give women asylum seekers a chance to be heard, believed, respected and valued, which is empowering and healing. It also gives a chance for the many talents and skills of its members to be recognised and celebrated. This collection of creative writing is a fine illustration of the talent that lies within the group.”
Farhat Khan