«World Central Kitchen is a simple idea born at home, with my wife Patricia: when people are hungry, you have to send them meals. Not tomorrow, today.” As chef José Andrés explains the soul of World Central Kitchen, a non-profit organization created to distribute meals in areas of the world affected by natural disasters and wars. The first expedition was in 2010, the year of the terrible earthquake that devastated Haiti. Chef Andrés, born in Mieres, Spain, and naturalized American, organized the first expedition designed not only to feed people in need, but to “pamper” them by cooking local dishes together with them such as mashed black beans and pureed with a sauce creamy, typical dish of the Caribbean islands.
Since then the chefs of World Central Kitchen they have traveled the world, from Houston to Puerto Rico, where after the devastation of Hurricane Maria they began to cook the sancocho in a friend's restaurant in the Santurce neighborhood, from migrants arriving at the US border after fleeing violence and poverty to families victims of the Ukrainian war, where Wck has also opened a cooking school.
«When you need medical service, you bring doctors and nurses. When reconstruction of infrastructure is necessary, engineers and architects are used. And if you have to feed people, you need chefs – reasons chef Andrés -. Our goal is to provide meals cooked with local ingredients by professional chefs.” Food not only to nourish the body, but also the souls. Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Wck has mobilized to help bring food and basic necessities to the inhabitants of the Strip, also through the new maritime corridor from Cyprus: together with the Spanish Open Arms it has thus delivered “by sea” the first aid reached the Palestinian population. «Today we lost many of our brothers and sisters in an air attack by the IDF, the Israeli army, in Gaza. My heart is broken – said the chef commenting on the killing of seven of its aid workers in an Israeli raid –. The Israeli government must stop these indiscriminate killings. It must stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon of war.”
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