Dispatch from José: WCK Activates in the Navajo Nation
WCK’s Relief Team activated this week in the Navajo Nation, which has been hit hard by COVID-19. José has been on the ground helping with food distribution in hard-to-reach communities, and we’re just getting started. This week, we also announced Restaurants For The People with a commitment of $50 million to keep local, independent restaurants open and working to get nourishing meals to the people of their communities who need them most.
Working alongside local leaders in the Navajo Nation across New Mexico and Arizona, WCK began this week in Rough Rock, supplying families with ingredient boxes to cook healthy meals at home. With little initial support from the Federal Government, the Navajo Nation struggled to keep COVID-19 from spreading and now has the highest rates of infection and deaths from the virus per capita. WCK is focusing on reaching families in rural communities, which have little access to food due to restricted travel and quarantine orders.
WCK is now working with over 1,500 eateries across the country and has already put more than $18 million directly into the hands of restaurants. Through our Restaurants For The People commitment and with your continued support, we will keep feeding seniors, children, and other vulnerable populations, while also keeping restaurant staff employed and the businesses open.
Former White House and Academy Awards chef Roberto Mendoza is cooking for the underserved community in Charlotte, North Carolina. For Mother’s Day, he made a special whole fish fry and the team gave roses to all the moms who came by to get meals for their families. A native Salvadoran, Roberto has spent recent years working to help immigrants, so he is glad to join our effort filling the gaps for people outside traditional social safety nets.
South Philly Barbacoa is a beloved Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia’s Italian Market. For the past month, working with WCK, they have been cooking hundreds of delicious meals each day that are then delivered with community-based organizations. What’s one of their most scrumptious dishes? A vegetable and bean curry over rice, served with a fresh salad!
Our relief efforts in Los Angeles have spanned the city and have included distributing meals in permanent supportive housing complexes in South LA. Keisha, one of the residents we are serving told us, “Some people try to say that no one cares, but looking at these meals I can see that’s not true. I can tell this was put together with thought and with care. That makes me feel important… I’m going to eat this, and then I’m going to go about my day and prosper.”
WCK’s Relief Team in New York City has been feeding both frontline healthcare workers and families affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19 for two months now. In celebration of International Nurses Day, our team wanted to show the appreciation we have for the heroic nurses who have flown in from all over the country to care for patients, and the many hometown heroes. We can’t say it enough, thank you!
Meanwhile, our COVID-19 efforts have also included a mobilization in Spain–and this week we surpassed 1 million meals provided through our #ChefsForSpain work. WCK distributed nutritious meals from 14 kitchens with the help of more than 200 chefs and thousands of volunteers. We are located in 36 cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, A Coruña, Sevilla, Cádiz, Huelva, Jaén, and Málaga.
WCK has now served more than 8 million meals in response to COVID-19. The impacts of this crisis are far from over, and we continue to work to serve the people most in need of support.
Applying lessons learned both from our work serving meals in this pandemic and years of experience as food first responders in the midst of outbreaks of cholera and other diseases, WCK worked with journalist Corby Kummer, the Aspen Institute, the James Beard Foundation, and Off Their Plate to provide comprehensive safety information as restaurants navigate food preparation and service in the time of COVID-19. While many remain closed, others are open for takeaway service, and all are evaluating what the future will look like.The Safety First guidelines can be accessed by anyone here.
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