Harmoneat

Harmoneat worked to bring people from all backgrounds together. The unjust and brutal military coup has united Myanmar in ways this military regime will never know.

The world is watching Myanmar. We see the suffering. We see the bravery. And we know that justice will prevail.

With love,
The Harmoneat Team

Myanmar's problems are deep and complex. Extremism and hate cannot be transformed by violence. Displacement will not bridge divides. Fear won't heal fractures.

Our hearts ache for everyone affected by conflict but we must work to understand why divides exist and what triggers violence.

Connection, compassion and kindness must be our watchwords at this time. And we will continue to support anyone and everyone working to bridge divides between communities.

With love, Harmoneat.

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ လူငယ္၊ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ႏွင့္ လုံျခဳံေရးဆုိင္ရာ သုေတသန - အေရးပါေသာ သင့္အျမင္ လြတ္လပ္ေသာ သုေတသန အဖြဲ႕မွ ျမန္မာ့ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ ႏွင့္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး တည္ေဆာက္ျခင္း လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ လူငယ္မ်ားပါ၀င္မႈ အခန္းက႑အေပၚ ေလ့လာသုံးသပ္ႏိုင္ရန္ ဤသုေတသနတြင္ - လူငယ္အမ်ိဳးသား၊ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား ျမန္မာ့ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ ႏွင့္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး တည္ေဆာင္မႈတြင္ ပါ၀င္ပံ့ပိုးေနမႈမ်ားက

Peace is more than the absence of violence. Peace is more than tolerance. Peace is more than coexistence.

Peace is justice. Peace is compassion. Peace is forgiveness. Peace is kindness. Peace is cooperation. Peace is community.

On the International Day of Peace let's start with the basics but not forget the destination. Share a meal. Build a bridge. Help a stranger. Reach out, connect and be the change you'd like to see in the world :)

In a world that's increasingly divided, we need stronger communities not higher walls. We need to celebrate the things that bring us together.

We need to remember that there's only one human race. Differences between individuals, between communities are social, not biological. And it's social solutions that will mend the divisions.

Harmoneat believes in the power of connections. That interaction can build trust. And that trust is the bedrock of a peaceful society. Fear has no place here.

Stay tuned for more.

Harmoneat.

Israeli Cafe Offers 50 Percent Off To Arabs And Jews Who Eat Together The owner of a cafe in central Israel is attempting to bring people together in the conflict-laden region over hummus. Kobi Tzafrir is providing a ...

Love this project. A great social enterprise, with an important message of tolerance as well! And great to see Harmoneat alumni Angus Johnstone connected too!

Myanmar Storytelling for All There are so many great stories behind the locally-produced handicrafts on Pomelo’s shelves, and we love to share them whenever we can. The Third Story Book Project is the organisation responsible for this series of colourful (and very popular!) children’s books that you might have seen in our shop:…

Having run a series of pilot projects in Myanmar, we've been back in Australia assessing how best to take our mission of building communities through food forward.

We have watched as the world, in recent weeks, has turned to divisive vitriol, polarising rhetoric and fear-based reporting in the wake of several terrorist attacks, and we have wept not only for the victims of such heinous atrocities, but for a world dividing.

Now, more than ever, we need to come together. We need to find common ground - like food - to nurture fragile relationships, transform tired and offensive stereotypes and to build a more resilient, peaceful future.

We need to - in these moments of intense vulnerability - find the strength to turn not against each other, but toward each other. We must have the courage to question our deepest nature, to ask what more we can do to build a cohesive, diverse society that our kids will be proud to grow up in and to invite new ways of collaborating despite perceived differences.

Harmoneat's next chapter will be starting soon here in Australia. If you want to be part of our efforts to create opportunities where people can explore diversity and tolerance using the common ground of food, PM us.

M & D xo

Israeli Cafe Offers 50 Percent Off To Arabs And Jews Who Eat Together The owner of a cafe in central Israel is attempting to bring people together in the conflict-laden region over hummus. Kobi Tzafrir is providing a 50 percent discount to Jewish and Arab customers who eat

Love this. Stories through music. It's passions like art, music and food that inspire individuals and build communities.

Travels in Myanmar: The Rich Musical Heritage Filmmakers Cyrus Moussavi and Jacob Russell of Raw Music International travel around Burma, searching for traditional music and the stories it tells.

We're busy plotting Harmoneat's next chapter and it's going to be SUPER! It's going to take sustainable voluntourism to a whole new level giving people from all over the world the chance to work side by side to create culinary and community magic! It's going to empower, employ and inspire with projects in Australia and abroad! Stay tuned.... and get in touch if you want to be involved. [email protected]

Harmoneat's cooking school will be closing our doors on 30 June. We are so humbled and thrilled with all that we have achieved in just twelve short months. Thanks to our supporters, partners, staff and volunteers for supporting our vision of building communities through food. Check back in for updates on future plans and operations. Love from the Harmoneat Team xox

Last weekend the Harmoneat team attended a graduation community event held by Veranda in HPa-An. Two cohorts of trainees showed off their Myanmar cooking skills in. Master Chef style competition with the prize being split between joint winners!

Harmoneat moving out sale: some large items remaining, please see photos for information. Items can be purchased or views between 4-5pm weekdays this week.

Last chance to book onto a traditional Myanmar cooking class next week. Final two classes are scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday. Please get in touch if you would like places. Thanks! 😊

YWCA putting their new skills into practice! Happy 115th Birthday YWCA!

Gas table top stove and gas bottle with pipe and connector for sale 110,000 kyat. Available to pick up from 22nd June. Deposit required to secure transaction. Available to view tomorrow from 2-3pm at the Harmoneat office!

Selfie Campaign Promotes Interfaith Tolerance and Ethnic Diversity in Myanmar · Global Voices "He is a Sikh and I'm a Muslim. But we are friends. Although we have diversities, we share our own opinions and beliefs, we accept and respect our different identities."

This week's international cooking session has included Vietnamese summer rolls and Chocolate Cornflakes! Great hands on recipes where you can be as creative or traditional as you like...

With the news of Harmoneat Yangon's cooking school closure in June 2015, there is still time to attend a Myanmar cooking class! We have the following dates available:
Tuesday 2nd June
Wednesday 3rd June
Saturday 6th June
Tuesday 9th June
Wednesday 10th June
Thursday 11th June
Friday 12th June
Saturday 13th June
Tuesday 16th June
Wednesday 17th June
Final cooking class taking place on Thursday 18th June

To book your place, please email: [email protected] or send a priavte message on Facebook.

The Harmoneat team look forward to welcoming you! :)

****AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ABOUT HARMONEAT YANGON***

Running a start-up social enterprise in a country that is ranked among the hardest to run a business in the world is never easy. We have worked our tails off since opening in July 2014 and even with half our expected annual operating budget, we have achieved the following outstanding results:

• Raised nearly $30,000 in funding
• Opened Yangon's largest cooking school
• Trained and given paid opportunities to 3 Myanmar women
• Mentored over 10 international volunteers
• Delivered cooking classes for over 200 visitors
• Established innovative partnerships
• Piloted a skills-building project with youth in Hpa-An
• Piloted a women's cooking initiative in partnership with YWCA
• Created a peace education curriculum using food
• Established a not for profit in Australia

We are immensely proud of our team, supporters and partners who have worked so hard to achieve all that we have in Yangon and Australia.

Despite all of this success in such a short period of time, working in Yangon has posed tremendous challenges for our team. Increasing rent prices, funding shortages, thievery within our premises and staff recruitment have all put enormous strain on staff and resources. On top of these challenges, following an extended period of ill health, we, as Directors, had to make the heartbreaking decision to return back to Australia from Yangon in April this year. We had high hopes that we could continue to support the Harmoneat Yangon operation remotely (as had been the plan from the beginning), however, it has become increasingly clear that this is no longer possible as several of our amazing team now choose to move on from Harmoneat to bigger and better opportunities.

It is for all of these reasons that we have decided to close down our Yangon operation effective June 30 this year, to take stock of lessons learned and to assess our future operations in Myanmar. We have 12 months worth of experience to draw on as we now pause and consider the way that we can best achieve our vision - a world united by commonalities rather than divided by difference - with the bulk of our team located in Australia. Thankfully, with our not for profit established here and some great insights to draw from, we have an incredible opportunity to move Harmoneat forward in a different modality - in Myanmar, that will likely be a combination of working with partners on our community work, and running food tours to Myanmar as a way to subsidise them. We will also be looking for opportunities to move Harmoneat Australia's work forward - with an initial focus on working with young people on peace education and running training for not for profit staff who wish to take the Harmoneat methodology to other countries and contexts.

We are both incredibly humbled to have witnessed Harmoneat Yangon's growth from a tiny thought bubble into a prospering community space that, in just twelve months, has achieved such a huge amount. Doing development in a way that is empowering and sustainable is hard - there's no doubt about that. And yet we have found ourselves redefining success as we tackle every new challenge.

We find ourselves now asking what could be achieved if all development programs, just like ours, had the bravery to stop and think about their effectiveness, rather than plough on indefinitely. We find ourselves reflecting on whether success can be found in numbers or outcomes, or rather in opportunities for growth given, small bonds formed between individuals or meaningful cooking experiences provided to others. We find ourselves marvelling at the organic growth of Harmoneat in Yangon and acknowledging the very real and ongoing need for grass-roots initiatives that bring divided communities together. We find ourselves heartbroken that this chapter has come to an end, but reinvigorated about the future....all at once.

To all of those who supported Harmoneat Yangon, especially those who saw our vision right from the start, we want to say thank you. The successes listed above are yours as much as ours. To our Yangon team, to our partners, to our volunteers - thank you for being our teachers. You have created a legacy that, in some form or another, will live on.

And now as we turn our attention inward to discuss the future, we ask for your ongoing support. We are, more than ever, committed to Harmoneat's vision and mission - to build communities through food. It is simply a matter of finding a way that we can do it sustainably, effectively and in a manner that empowers those we work with. If you would like to volunteer your time or skills, or learn more about the Harmoneat methodology to use in your own organisation, we encourage you to get in touch at [email protected]

To the future,

Meg and Dave

Welcoming back the YWCA women for an international cooking class!