“Mini vacation every Wednesday”

In the midst of a career switch, Sophie finds a challenging volunteer job in the cooking team of Buurtwerkplaats Noorderhof at the Sloterplas. Every Wednesday, she conjures up a delicious lunch for the handymen and artists of this oasis by the lake, either alone or together with fellow cooks.Since 2015, a group of enthusiastic designers has transformed a piece of vacant land next to the Sloterparkbad into a bustling meeting and development place where learning and working take place. Working, literally on all kinds of tasks and art projects, but metaphorically on a better world (“social design”) by stimulating interaction, creativity, and co-creation.

I immediately notice how this plays out in practice when I walk onto the site. The sound of welding, sawing, and hammering is deafening, and behind the large shed, work is being done on a huge steel artwork, while next to it, a group is busy building a giant earthworm for the Museum Night. A bit further, I see how the floating Finnish sauna is being prepared to sail out onto the lake. The guests are shivering on the side.

“I wanted to do something with cooking and baking”

In the main shack itself, it’s still busy. Lunch has just finished. The driving force behind that meal is Sophie, whom I find busy there. She is briefly talking to a Turkish resident before we can calmly start the conversation. Well, calm: even in the shack, there is a constant flow of active local residents, artists, students, and other “makers” from the workshop.

Sophie herself walked onto the premises about ten months ago. She was looking for volunteer work during a period of changing careers. She was a health scientist, now she’s becoming a pastry chef!

“I always used to run past here during my runs around the Sloterplas, and I was looking for volunteer work, something related to cooking and baking. And then this came up during a conversation with the Volunteer Center Amsterdam. So that was nice.”

Freedom and improvisation

Sophie could get started in the neighborhood workshop in the cooking team. “I was very warmly welcomed and could start right away and was given a lot of freedom.” In concrete terms, this means providing lunch every Wednesday, often together with others, for about twenty people. That number varies, as nothing is really certain: “Cooking is always a challenge. It always works out differently than you expect. You never know what you will find, if there are still items left from an event over the weekend, who will be joining for the meal, if there are items from the vegetable garden that we need to use. Sometimes there are people from the maintenance team who then become guest chefs and I become the helper, so to speak. That’s fine too.”

Cooking outdoors, camping in the city

From the beginning, Sophie has felt at home. The reception was warm and “I find it very enriching myself. You meet very nice people and you enter worlds that you didn’t know so well. It’s also fun to cook with others. And you get more connected to your neighborhood and get to know local residents.”

And it also provides valuable work experience, such as extreme improvisation. “Dealing with a different situation every time, even though you have a kind of concept in your head for that day, it always turns out differently.”

Like the time she had in mind to make Erbeerknödel, a specialty from South Germany where Sophie left eighteen years ago to study in Amsterdam. Then, the electricity went out again, so the delicacy was only ready late in the afternoon. But, who cares: the neighborhood workshop visitors are flexible.

The fact that there is only one water tap on the entire site also requires improvisation. Especially because cooking often takes place outside, it feels a bit like camping. Beaming, Sophie proudly says, “A mini vacation every Wednesday.”

A kind of family

Sophie has now found a job as a pastry chef. There is no time for cooking in the neighborhood workshop for now. First, she needs to get used to the new reality. She will miss it. “It’s like a kind of family.”

But she will surely come back for events. Or for the floating sauna, built by Finnish residents, or swimming with visitors from the neighborhood workshop. There is always something to do!

Do you also want to discover what volunteering can bring you?

Viewall possibilities onlineor createan appointment for personalized advice– We are happy to help you get started!Text: Piet Renooy
Photos: Marcel Jansen