Eataly Pizza for the Children of Urfa

In the spring of 2016, 400 Turkish children saw a dream come true: to eat pizza for the first time!

400 Turkish children saw a dream come true: to eat pizza for the first time! All thanks to our shop in Turkey, Eataly Istanbul, and to Dreamstalk.

Eating pizza: this was the wish expressed by little Kadriye in 2016, a 10-year-old boy from Germiş Dağ Eteği Kӧyϋ, a small town in eastern Turkey in the province of Urfa, near the border with Syria and just 60 km from Kobane. Kadriye's wish was filmed for a video for Dreamstalk, the online platform that encourages young people to express themselves and helps them achieve their goals and projects.

Eataly Istanbul immediately took action to make the dream of Kadriye and the other children of this Turkish village come true: on 20 April 2016, the executive chef of Eataly, Claudio Chinali, and his kitchen brigade made the day of the 400 small inhabitants of Germiş unforgettable!

To celebrate Çocuk Bayramı, Turkey's independence day and a day dedicated to children, the village school yard was transformed into a real pizzeria, complete with an oven, work counter and of course lots of pizza dough.

Eataly per i bambini di Urfa

The expert pizza masters worked the dough, rolled it out and seasoned it according to the best Italian tradition, with Campania tomatoes, fiordilatte mozzarella and a basil leaf, then cooking them.

Kadriye and the other children finally had their dream come true, enjoying pizza for the first time! A small but great symbol of cultural integration and peace in a land unfortunately marked by conflict.

We at Eataly are proud to have contributed to fulfilling the dream of the children of Urfa and to have brought pizza to the Fertile Crescent, where agriculture was born, for the first time. But we didn't stop there!

The chefs of Eataly Istanbul offered free baking, bread and pizza lessons at Harran University in Urfa, again in collaboration with Dreamstalk.

The goal? To help small villages become stronger and more economically independent, following the principles of sustainability and, why not, a passion for cooking and good food.

Eataly per i bambini di Urfa