WCK conducts our first airdrop of food into northern Gaza
World Central Kitchen participated in an airdrop of 500 pallets of humanitarian aid into Northern Gaza. José Andrés, WCK’s founder and Chief Feeding Officer, joined the Jordanian Royal Air Force and the Royal Netherlands Air Force as part of the international effort to complete our first delivery of this kind. Our teams have provided more than 32 million meals in Gaza since first responding to the escalating conflict in the region.
The WCK food pallets included in the airdrop were delivered to a Jordanian field hospital in hard-to-reach northern Gaza. The shipment included rice, dates, tomato paste, oil, fava beans, a variety of spices, and other desperately needed food for families on the brink of famine.
“This could be a great way to be bringing food inside the northern part of Gaza,” said José. “So maybe in the short term we can do a lot of food drops to alleviate the food needs.”
WCK is also running convoys of food to the North, but our teams are only able to get there a limited number of times each week. When our team goes, they take two trucks: one transports meals for hospitals. The other carries food for the crowds of Palestinians the drivers encounter along the route. Masses of people gather around this second truck and distribute the food amongst themselves to take back to their families.
Community distribution of meal kits in Gaza.
“The team has developed a three-to-four day meal box that is much more dense in calories and variety,” said John, WCK’s Response Lead. “We are preparing to send these boxes in secured convoys to the north where there has been very little support.”
Meanwhile, we are innovating our response on a daily basis. This is what WCK’S Director of Emergency Response Sam believes is the secret to WCK’s success in Gaza. “I would say if there was one magic ingredient, it would just be pure tenacity from our team and persistent pushing on every possible avenue every day.”
Left: Hadel coordinates meal distribution for WCK. Right: Women folding fresh baked saj bread in the WCK kitchen.
Cooks in our Rafah kitchen are preparing more than 32,000 hot meals and meal kits daily, along with 12,000 pieces of freshly baked bread for Palestinian families.
Our team prioritizes culturally appropriate, nourishing meals like spice-filled ouzi rice with veggies and meat, and hearty mujaddara made of lentils, rice, and caramelized onions. Familiar dishes like these bring comfort to families living through the darkest times imaginable.
The freshly baked bread we’re serving is made possible by our team of Palestinians baking 12,000 pieces of saj—a local flatbread—daily. “Baking saj bread has been my profession for 15 years,” said Ahmed, one of the bakers helping prepare the saj. “I always enjoy my work, especially when it’s in the service of displaced people.”
Baking saj bread has been my profession for 15 years. I always enjoy my work, especially when it’s in the service of displaced people.
Ahmed
Palestinian baker working in the WCK Rafah kitchen
Sam was on the ground in Gaza for weeks and saw first hand how our local team, almost entirely directly impacted by the conflict, is driving our response. “Community is the superpower,” explained Sam, who was humbled by the ingenuity of Palestinians and pointed to our Rafah kitchen’s baking operation as a clear example.
When we first brought our specially-designed stoves into Gaza it was unclear how our team would use them to bake bread. Within 15 minutes, the kitchen team figured out how to combine the pellet stove with the rounded steel pans used to cook saj bread. By the end of the process, the cook time for the flatbreads went from 20 seconds each to six seconds each. “We can design things until we’re blue in the face, but what the real experts—the Palestinians on the ground—do with it is going to be completely different and a million times better,” Sam explained.
While our Palestinian team members innovate inside Gaza, WCK’s team in Cairo is seeking out ideas from around the world to make sure we are delivering the smartest, most intentional aid we can. Right now our team is testing the use of Wonderbags, a non-electric slow cooker made out of cushions sewn into fabric. Such a simple device has a powerful purpose—these Wonderbags can keep a boiling pot of food cooking for up to six hours.
The WCK team testing the use of Wonderbags, a non-electric slow cooker.
Wonderbags free up stoves quickly in our kitchen, since food can be placed in them to continue cooking and the burner that pot was on can start heating another batch. It also allows cooked food to stay hot longer, giving our teams more time to plate food while maintaining food safety standards. WCK worked with the Wonderbag team to bring the design to Cairo and create prototypes that specifically fit the large 40-gallon cooking pots used in our Gaza kitchen. Wonderbags have become the latest tool that we are using to scale up our response and ensure that even more families get the food they need.
Once the food is cooked, plated, and packed, WCK’s Hadel uses her knowledge of local communities in Rafah to coordinate the distribution of the food. Local knowledge is a critical part of WCK’s ability to meet food needs during responses around the world. Palestinians are leading our efforts to support families in Gaza, and making sure WCK is reaching anyone who needs a meal.
Help us keep cooking for families in need.
