This meal idea was created by the OpenSeat team to bring light to Mental Health awareness, and the role that community plays in helping us share our burdens, bringing relief and alleviation while allowing ourselves both to be further known and know others.
Our meal campaigns (like Mindful Meals) have grown out of OpenSeat's desire to find novel ways to decrease social isolation and disconnection through people sharing meals together.
By creating a platform to facilitate social connection through food and conversation around shared tables, OpenSeat's vision is to help build genuine communities worldwide by enabling people to connect meaningfully and memorably – in particular those from different backgrounds and viewpoints.
OpenSeat as a concept arose when co-founder Matt was working in Sweden for a season and craved a more authentic experience of community. As Callum recalls, “Matt said it was hard to build community and meet people. He wanted to experience dinner with a Swedish family. 'Imagine if there was an app for this, like we find accommodation on Airbnb?'”
Meal-based hospitality can be used for multiple purposes — whether helping foreigners like Matt find a local home and family for dinner, bringing together leaders from different communities in post-conflict situations, or — in the case of Mindful Meals — enabling meaningful conversations about mental health and mindfulness.
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This is a once-off time commitment to plan and host a meal. With a team, this would involve a planning session about venue and food logistics, as well as a structure for the conversational focus of the meal. Beyond this, time would be required to prepare the venue and food and host the meal.
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