Challenges multiplying in Gaza
Since October 2023, World Central Kitchen has worked side by side with local organizations and Palestinians to provide nearly 60 million meals in Gaza. We have witnessed firsthand the incredible feats of Palestinians, from developing solutions to immense challenges to selflessly helping others and creating moments of joy even in harrowing circumstances. Yet even with so many people eager to support their communities, the situation continues to worsen.
“The ground offensive in Gaza has been very intense in the last few days,” said John, WCK’s response lead currently on the ground in Cairo. “The safe areas for refugees are shrinking daily.”
Areas near our kitchens have become the focal point of Israeli military operations. As a result, we can no longer get critical resupplies of ingredients and equipment to several WCK-supported community kitchens. Over the past week, eleven of these kitchens have had to stop cooking and another eight have been cut off from our aid—meaning they can only continue to cook with whatever supplies they have left.
Days ago, we were forced to evacuate Zomi’s Kitchen just one month after it became operational. This was our newest Field Kitchen, built and named in honor of Zomi Frankcom—one of the seven WCK team members killed in an Israeli military strike on our humanitarian aid convoy. This kitchen was staffed and led almost entirely by women and was scaling up to provide tens of thousands of hot meals daily to Palestinians sheltering in Khan Younis.
Just days ago, women like Rawiya were cooking thousands of meals in Zomi’s Kitchen.
Zomi’s Kitchen was already providing thousands of meals each day to patients, families, and staff in local hospitals, as well as to displaced families in the area. Fortunately our other large-capacity field kitchens in Deir al-Balah and Mawasi remain operational and can take on the hospital deliveries. The Palestinians in these kitchens are working tirelessly to ensure people who relied on Zomi’s Kitchen for food still get a meal. This temporary solution may not work for much longer as supplying all of our field kitchen has become dangerous and difficult in recent days.
Our local community outreach team in Gaza noted that meeting the increased demand is putting extra pressure on our existing kitchens. They also emphasized that because of resupply issues, we have not been able to get eco-pellets to our kitchens, which fuel our stoves. Without these, our kitchens will be forced to scale down daily meals.
Currently, only two out of three of our large-capacity field kitchens and 61 of our more than 150 community kitchens are able to operate. Evacuation orders, dangerous conditions, and lack of safe resupply routes have severely curtailed our Gaza team’s ability to meet the needs of their communities. Even still, our teams continue to show up every day, doing everything they possibly can to help their fellow Palestinians.
Help our teams in Gaza to continue cooking.
