Celebrating cultures at Trengo 🍲😋
Written byJosy Villamar 
What’s the best way to make everyone feel included when you have a growing team with numerous nationalities? At Trengo, we organize monthly Cultural Days where employees are encouraged to cook recipes from their countries of origin with our workplace experience team. Besides celebrating Halloween and Christmas together, we decided to use the power of food to bring us closer together and celebrate the 32 cultures represented in our team.
How our Cultural Days started
“It all started a couple of months ago when a colleague shared the idea of cooking something from his country with our chef Pim,” says Andrea, a workplace experience manager from Guatemala. “It all went so naturally that a few weeks later, we were all in the canteen learning more about the Iranian new year and eating their delicious traditional dishes like Kasha o bademjan and Zereshk polo ba morgh.
Nima, our software engineer from Iran, was one of the hosts for the Iranian culture day. “It was very beautiful and fulfilling to be able to introduce my country’s culture to others. These days, as the world gets darker, we can celebrate our cultures together to show the world that we can live together peacefully and respect others’ beliefs. I am so keen to learn about the other colleagues’ beautiful cultures as well,” says Nima.
The first Cultural Day was such a big success that we decided to turn it into a recurring event. On these days, we don’t only cook as authentic as possible but we also investigate and learn about the history of the country. This helps us be more empathetic to each other and have genuinely in-depth conversations.
From King’s Day to Eid-Al-Fitr
With a wide range of cultures in our company, we get to discover a lot of amazing dishes. We celebrated Kings Day with our Dutch colleagues with a delicious orange tompouce. And for the end of Ramadan, Eid-Al-Fitr (a.k.a. Sugar Feast), we had some fresh baklava.
We also celebrate Culture Day with our colleagues that work remotely. All international colleagues can share their favorite recipes from their home countries and cook them with us on a date that has meaning for them. In November, we will celebrate Surinam’s independence day with our team members who work from there. We can’t wait to try the recipe they sent us!
The art of being welcoming
At Trengo, we want to create an inclusive environment where people feel safe and have a sense of belonging. We care about getting to know each other on a more personal level and celebrate both our similarities and differences. That’s why we made “Being welcoming” one of our core values. On our journey to make Trengo succeed, we never want to forget about the people behind that success.
While working in a hybrid model, we recorded some of the highest numbers of people working from the office during our Cultural days. We can feel the excitement from the people cooking the food to the rest of the team that gets to enjoy it. They are curious about the ingredients used in the recipes and the history behind each celebration. Our Cultural Days have become a moment to start a conversation and learn more about other cultures.
Our Cultural Days are the perfect opportunity to learn from, understand, support, and uplift each other. And we can’t wait for the next edition.
Our next celebration is Peruvian Cultural Day. Follow us on Instagram (@trengohq) for stories from our new beautiful office on the 4th of August.
