The aid group World Central Kitchen said Tuesday that it is pausing its efforts to feed Palestinians in Gaza after seven of its workers were killed by an Israeli strike.
The nonprofitsaid in a statement that the team was hit while leaving a warehouse where they had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza by sea, a route that World Central Kitchen helped establish just last month.
The organization said the convoy had been traveling in a deconflicted zone, in armored cars branded with their logo and after coordinating movements with Israels military, which now says it will conduct an investigation of the incident “at the highest levels.” Erin Gore, the CEO of World Central Kitchen, called it a “targeted attack.”
“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” she said.
The U.S.-based organization, which was founded by celebrity chef José Andrés and his wife Patricia in 2010, delivers food to people on the front lines of natural and humanitarian disasters around the world.
It has been working on the ground in the region since Hamas–led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government. Israelis military response in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, displaced an estimated 1.7 million and left the territory on the brink of famine.
WCK said last week that it had provided some 42 million meals to people in Gaza over 175 days, calling the situation there “the most dire weve ever seen or experienced in our 15 year history.”
“More and more people, particularly children, are dying of starvation,” Gore and Andrés said in a joint statement. “Weve known for months that famine is imminent and the situation is getting worse.”
With food scarce and malnutrition rising, international experts have warned that some 30% of Gazas population is already facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger and that northern Gaza could officially see famine anytime between now and May.
World Central Kitchen isnt the only organization working to get food into Gaza, where aid deliveries are severely limited by Israeli border restrictions, logistical challenges and ongoing fighting. But it has played a major role in the humanitarian response, including sending two shipments of hundreds of tons of food to Gaza by sea.
The second such shipment — stocked with shelf-stable items like rice, canned vegetables and proteins, as well as dates in honor of Ramadan — left Cyprus on Saturday. The Cypriot foreign ministry said Tuesday that some 100 tons of aid had been unloaded in Gaza before WCK announced it was pausing its operations in the enclave, and the remaining 240 tons would be returned to Cyprus, according to the Associated Press.
Just days ago, WCK vowed it would keep pushing to get food into Gaza “until there is substantial aid getting in via land.” Now those plans are up in the air — it says it will be “making decisions about the future of our work soon.”
When a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, 2023, claiming over 40,000 lives so far, Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen (WCK) immediately mobilized to provide food relief on the ground. Since the early days of the response, WCK has expanded their operations dramatically across the affected regions of Turkey to continue serving warm meals and food supplies to those struggling in the aftermath.
In this article, I will provide an in-depth look at WCK’s extensive ongoing earthquake relief work on the ground in Turkey. From their headquarters in Gaziantep to remote mobilized kitchens, WCK has established a significant presence throughout Turkey to feed hundreds of thousands of people impacted by the catastrophic destruction.
Arriving in Turkey in the Aftermath
Within 24 hours of the earthquake striking Chef Andrés and an advance team from WCK arrived in Turkey ready to help. They initially set up operations in Adana as it was close to their arrival point and in an area heavily impacted.
After assessing the wide scale of destruction, WCK determined that the city of Gaziantep, around 140 miles east, would position them more centrally to reach the many affected areas. Just a few weeks after arriving, WCK moved their headquarters to Gaziantep, where it remains today overseeing relief efforts.
In addition to their main base, WCK has set up satellite kitchens in critical locations near devastated communities that lacked access to food. This hyper-local approach has enabled them to pivot nimbly and get food where it’s needed most.
Ramping Up to Serve Hundreds of Thousands
In the first day alone, WCK teams provided over 15,000 fresh meals to survivors and first responders in multiple cities In just the first two weeks, they served over 500,000 meals and counting
Their daily meal production capacity has scaled up enormously through relentless effort. By activating local restaurants and caterers as community kitchens, WCK now produces over 300,000 hot, nutritious meals per day.
They have also distributed over 2 million food packages containing shelf-stable items like granola bars, applesauce, and bottled water. Food trucks transport these meal kits and hot food to the heart of impacted zones regularly.
Reaching Remote Regions
While WCK has focused on major population centers, they knew many vulnerable remote villages had been completely cut off. To solve this, they send out small mobile kitchen units via vans fully equipped to cook on the road.
These transportable kitchens, staffed by volunteer chefs, can drive directly into rural earthquake-damaged villages to cook hot food on site for residents who otherwise have nothing. They prepare culturally appropriate dishes using local ingredients when available.
Providing More Than Just Meals
In emergency scenarios, WCK understands food is more than physical nourishment. The social act of sharing a comforting meal provides mental relief and hope. Their chefs prepare familiar cultural dishes to give a sense of home.
Beyond serving hot meals at field kitchens, WCK works to create inviting environments. Some locations have been designed like outdoor restaurants, allowing families a place to sit together for a warm meal – perhaps their first since the earthquake.
Looking Ahead at Long-Term Needs
While WCK started by serving first responders and displaced survivors, they are already looking ahead to the long road of recovery. With so many homes uninhabitable, needs will remain immense for months.
WCK will continue expanding its reach to additional underserved areas as infrastructure is slowly rebuilt. They are committed to remaining a consistent source of food stability as communities regain their footing after such traumatic loss.
Delivering Food Brings Normalcy and Hope
Arriving in Turkey just hours after the massive earthquake turned life upside down, WCK brought the comfort of hot, nourishing meals when it was needed most. Their operations have scaled dramatically to meet the enormous needs.
From their nerve center in Gaziantep to remote mobile kitchens deep in rural villages, WCK has become a vital food lifeline across Turkey. Their work delivering food brings both physical and mental relief – giving people the energy and hope to carry on despite unthinkable tragedy.
WCK brings food to the front lines of disasters
Andrés is a Spanish-American chef known for his numerous U.S. restaurants, PBS travel series and humanitarian work of over a decade.
He traveled to Haiti after it was struck by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010, cooking for displaced people in camps — an ad hoc relief mission that helped set World Central Kitchen in motion.
WCK has responded to a long list of natural and man-made disasters ever since, working with local partners on the ground.
It served more than 20,000 meals in the Houston area after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and another 3.7 million across Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, for which Andrés was named the James Beard humanitarian of the year in 2018 (seven years after winning its “outstanding chef” award).
He told NPR that same year that he expected to see more chefs getting involved in disaster response, since “restaurant people” are particularly well suited to managing chaos.
“What we are very good at is understanding the problem and adapting,” he said. “And so a problem becomes an opportunity … Were practical. Were efficient. And we can do it quicker, faster and better than anybody.”
The organization has grown substantially over the years and expanded its efforts to focus not only on disaster response but resilience training and longer-term community needs, including opening a culinary school in Port-au-Prince several years after the earthquake that started it.
It has fed survivors of major wildfires in California and Hawaii, federal workers in D.C. during the 2019 government shutdown and stranded cruise ship passengers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, throughout which it provided food for front line workers and other vulnerable groups in the U.S. as well as Spain, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic.
It delivered hot meals and fresh produce to a Buffalo, N.Y., neighborhood after 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket, and distributed food after the Uvalde school shooting in Texas.
More recently, WCK provided more than 20 million meals to people impacted by the dual earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last April. And it has responded to Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine by providing millions of meals to people there, first in hard-hit population centers and neighboring countries, and increasingly in more remote and vulnerable areas.
This is not the first time WCK has lost workers in a conflict zone
World Central Kitchen has lost workers before.
Several team members have been killed in Ukraine in recent years, according to the organization.
It said in June that a 60-year-old volunteer named Igor was killed when Russian shelling hit his apartment building in Kharkiv, and that two other volunteers, Sardor and Viktoria, had been killed in a strike in Chuhuiv the previous July. (The group only identified them by their first names.)
Andrés told NPRs Morning Edition in December that WCK had lost a total of six people in Ukraine.
“As a cook, as a chef, when I founded this organization, I never expected that this will happen,” he said. “And I almost wanted to pull World Central Kitchen immediately out of Ukraine. But the locals told me: José, You cannot leave. We need you. We need your organization.”
World Central Kitchen founder helps craft meals for earthquake survivors | ABCNL
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