World Central Kitchen

Adapted from the WCK website: In 2010, Chef José Andrés, ready to use his culinary knowledge and talent to help, headed to Haiti following a devastating earthquake. Cooking alongside displaced families in a camp, he was guided on the proper way to cook black beans the way Haitians like to eat them: mashed and sieved into a creamy sauce. It wasn’t just about feeding people in need—it was about listening, learning, and cooking side by side with the people impacted by the crisis. This is the real meaning of comfort food, and it’s the core value that José, along with his wife Patricia, used at the center of founding World Central Kitchen.

Over the years, José and WCK teams have continued to learn, adapt, and build responses unique to each situation and community. We have, at times, made long-term commitments in food systems following disasters. Our Food Producer Network ran for five years supporting small food producers in Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, Guatemala, and the USVIs. While cooking hot meals with locally sourced ingredients from Field Kitchens has traditionally been our goal and focus in times of crisis, sometimes fresh produce boxes or meal kits for families to cook themselves are a better fit. Partnering with local restaurants looking to help their neighbors allows us to get meals ready immediately. During our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, meals that were cooked, cooled, and could be reheated by families safely at home met the unique need of the time. The WCK approach is that we should always work with urgency, listen to communities, and adapt—all virtues that guide our work.

Since preparing the first few hundred meals, WCK teams have served meals to people recovering from crisis every single day. Hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, and volcano eruptions took the team across the world, growing in knowledge and capacity with each crisis. Initially responding to just natural disasters, WCK quickly expanded the definition of disasters to which we respond—providing nourishing meals for refugees arriving at the US border after fleeing violence and extreme poverty, Venezuelan families lacking access to food in their own neighborhoods, heroic hospital staff working nonstop in the uncertainty of a global pandemic, and Ukrainian families living through an unthinkable invasion and the constant threat of attack. All of this work is made possible by working with communities wherever WCK teams go—over and over again, WCK sees the best of humanity show up in the worst of times. World Central Kitchen teams across the world remain deeply committed to serving delicious, chef-prepared meals to people with the dignity they deserve. As the climate-crisis worsens and disasters become not only larger, but more frequent, we’ll continue to be there—and we hope you’ll join us. As José likes to say, “everyone is a part of World Central Kitchen, they may just not know it yet!”.

For more information on the great work that World Central Kitchen does all across the world, please check out their website: https://www.wck.org