It’s gift-giving season: Why not choose gifts that give twice ?
Every year around this time, many of us end up in the same situation: wandering through crowded shops or scrolling endlessly online, trying to find something to wrap and put under the tree.
This year, we’d like to invite you to do something different.
Instead of buying things that might be forgotten by January, you can give a present that carries recipes, memories, poems, drawings… and directly supports people on the move on the island of Samos.
We’re talking about our community cookbook Displaced Dishes and our community zine Roots and Branches.
These are gifts that give twice:
once to the person who receives them,
and once to the community that created them.
Why meaningful gifts matter :
For people seeking asylum in Europe, daily life is often shaped by waiting, uncertainty, and an asylum system that reduces people to numbers and categories.
At Samos Volunteers, we try to do the opposite.
In our community spaces, people come together, learn, write, play, draw, laugh, and share. Food, art and words become ways to reclaim identity and rebuild a sense of home, despite all the uncertainty.
When you choose Displaced Dishes or Roots and Branches as a gift, you are not only giving a beautiful object. You are also helping to keep these spaces alive and free for the people who use them every day.
That’s what makes them gifts that give twice.
Displaced Dishes: a cookbook full of stories
Displaced Dishes is a community cookbook made up of recipes shared by people with lived experience of displacement on Samos.
Inside, you’ll find dishes from many different countries and regions, from hearty meals cooked for big family gatherings to simple comfort food that tastes like home.
Each recipe comes with a small story, memory, or note from the person who contributed it. Sometimes it’s a childhood story, sometimes a reminder of a holiday, sometimes a simple tip: “This is what my mother always added, don’t leave it out.”
These short texts turn the book into more than just a collection of recipes. It becomes a record of lives, journeys and families, told through the food people love.
What makes Displaced Dishes special?
It’s created with and by people living in the Samos refugee camp.
It’s beautifully designed and easy to use in any kitchen.
And most importantly: 100% of profits from the cookbook support the work of Samos Volunteers, helping us to keep running our community spaces and activities on the island.
When someone opens this book, they don’t just discover new recipes. They meet the people behind them.
Roots and Branches: a zine of voices, art, and resistance
If the cookbook speaks through taste and smell, Roots and Branches, our Community Zine speaks through words, drawings, and images.
The zine grew out of creative and community journalism workshops in our spaces. Participants explored themes like home and belonging, culture and identity, hope and resilience, and reflections on the future.
From these sessions came poems, short texts, letters, drawings, collages, and visual pieces. Roots and Branches brings them together. It is people speaking for themselves, in their own styles and voices. It is also a way to share those voices beyond the walls of our centre.
Like the cookbook, all proceeds from Roots and Branches go back into our community work on Samos.
What makes these gifts “ethical” or “meaningful”?
No gift is perfect, and no label is magic. But Displaced Dishes and Roots and Branches bring together several things that matter:
1. They centre lived experience
The cookbook and zine are shaped by the people who use our spaces and who live with the reality of displacement. Their recipes, stories and art are included with care, awareness, and consent.
This is not about speaking for people. It’s about making space for people to speak themselves.
2. They are “double gifts”
When you give a copy to a friend, you’re also supporting the community on Samos.
Every purchase helps us continue our clothes distribution, language and education activities, creative workshops, maintain safe community spaces, and psychosocial support activities.
It’s one object, but two forms of giving.
3. They open conversations
Unwrapping a cookbook born in a refugee camp, or a zine created in a community centre, usually leads to questions and creates opportunities for conversations. These are valuable. They help raise awareness about migration, borders, solidarity, and everyday life. Real discussions, away from the usual headlines and statistics.
4. They resist “crisis fatigue”
News moves quickly. The situation on the Greek islands is no longer as visible in international media as it once was. But for people living it, it is still daily life.
By choosing these as gifts, you’re quietly saying that you haven’t looked away, that you still care about what is happening on Europe’s borders.
You’re choosing to support something long-term and showing that, just like us, you still care about the people living this reality every day.
From all of us at Samos Volunteers: thank you for choosing solidarity this gift-giving season.
How to get your copies :
You can order both directly online:
All details about editions, prices, and shipping are on the product pages. You can order for yourself, send a copy to a friend, or organize a group order and share the shipping.
They’re both compact A5 formats, easy to slip into stockings, envelopes, or alongside another small gift.
