Culinary Diplomacy with Better Plate

This is a Special Correspondent Episode and part of Rebecca Picard’s #CulinaryDiplomacy series.

The Better Plate Community Columbus is a nonprofit founded to promote cross-cultural exchange through food-related community events. They are the first US-based satellite of Über den Tellerrand. They organize community events to encourage refugees, other immigrants, and the settled population to meet together over food. At these events, people from several different cultures cook, share, and discuss some of their favorite dishes. These events are donation-based to allow as many people to attend as possible.

They also coordinate refugee and other immigrant-led cooking classes. These cooking classes are led by excellent home cooks are who are passionate about food. They meet in home or community kitchens, work together to cook a meal, and then eat together. The Better Plate Community Columbus is committed to offering our classes at affordable prices and offer financial assistance.

MARGARET CHINN is co-founder of Better Plate Community Columbus and currently serves as Secretary of the Board. She likes trying new recipes and getting others involved in the fun. Professionally her background is in social work, teaching, and math.

AMANDA WARNER is a co-founder of Better Plate Community Columbus and is currently serving as president of the board. 

While cooking has been an ongoing passion for Amanda, recent travels sparked a deeper interest in how food can be used as a point of connection between individuals and communities. From 2014 – 2016, Amanda traveled with her husband and young son, working, playing, and eating their way through more than twenty countries on six continents. Amanda took cooking classes as she traveled, experiencing directly how food helped her connect with others and learn more about their cultures. Towards the end of the trip, she attended several events at Über den Tellerrand kochen, an organization in Berlin that organizes events designed to bring refugees and the settled population together over food. This inspired the idea to begin something similar when she returned to Ohio.

Professionally, Amanda is a consultant, instructional designer, and web developer who partners with international NGOs to design and develop interactive learning experiences (www.amanda-warner.com). She also volunteers at a local refugee resettlement agency.

KUUKUA DZIGBORDI YOMEKPE was born in Ghana and immigrated to the U.S. in 1996. She holds a BA and an MA in English from Ohio Dominican College and the University of Dayton respectively. She was a Bay Area transplant while she worked on her Masters in Theological Studies. She graduated with distinction and was awarded the Marcella Althaus-Reid award for Best Queer Essay in her graduating class. She is ABD in her MFA program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She brands herself the perpetual student.

Within the span of her life, she has inhabited multiple roles, most of which seem to have nothing in common except that the majority have something to do with education. Her adult working career began in Daycare and After-School programming and continued to Student Affairs/Residential Life work first at the University of Dayton, and later on, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. While a graduate student at the Pacific School of Religion, she served as the Earl Lectures Coordinator for the annual Earl Lectures in Berkeley, CA. She’s worked several odd jobs at various times in between, but the most notable of them all was when she worked ...