WCK Field Kitchen opens in Gaza
Since our response to the conflict in the Middle East first began in October, World Central Kitchen, alongside our partners, has provided more than 11.5 million meals in the region in the form of freshly prepared, hot meals and food kits. Now, 10 weeks after serving our first plates of food, we have overcome immense challenges to begin cooking from WCK’s first Relief Kitchen in Gaza. Through our kitchen and those of our partners, we are quickly scaling our capacity to produce warm, nourishing meals for people fleeing for their lives.
At the same time, we are supporting families near the border in Israel who live in communities under rocket attack as well as seniors now unable to access food by themselves. We continue to assess the needs and adjust our response across the country as families who evacuated weeks ago are now able to return home. This approach allows us to wind down our efforts in areas where local organizations are offering longer term food support, while still working with restaurants and catering companies to ensure we reach all pockets of need. Our partners in Lebanon are also providing thousands of meals daily to people displaced from homes near the Israeli border as a result of the conflict.
For several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee to southern Gaza, desperately seeking shelter from persistent bombardment. The population of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, has swelled from 250,000 people to well over a million. The high concentration of displaced families means large makeshift camps have emerged in the region. In order to get families the support they need, when and where they need it, our teams are providing meals at camps, hospitals, and schools that have become shelters.
We recently delivered thousands of meal kits to families who have built improvised shelters at a camp by the Egyptian border. These kits include enough food to prepare 14 meals and are distributed in cloth tote bags that make them easy to transport as people are continually on the move in search of safety. We made this delivery with the support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) who provided trucks to transport the kits directly to families in need. UNRWA is also offering this support further north in Khan Younis where our partner Anera oversees distribution of our meal kits. In total, we have delivered more than 3.3 million pounds of food, including legumes, flour, canned meats and vegetables, and cooking oil.
WCK teams are also working with local community leaders to reach as many people as possible. In Rafah, Najah runs the Center for Women Programs. As the conflict began to displace more and more people, she opened the doors of her home and community center to offer shelter to families who were forced to flee their homes. There, she uses WCK-provided ingredients and supplies to prepare hundreds of meals daily. Despite recently breaking her leg, she continues overseeing the shelters. This determination has earned her the nickname “Power Mama” from our team.
Suhad was forced to flee her home and is now living with thousands more displaced families at a camp in Rafah. Despite personal loss, she has stepped up to help the people around her. She has become a trusted community partner, developing a system to ensure WCK food kits are distributed in a safe and organized manner at the camp where she is sheltering.
Like many other supplies, cooking fuel is running out in Gaza. Families are desperately salvaging whatever they can to cook with improvised stoves—debris from destroyed homes, shipping pallets, even garbage. These makeshift fuels are laden with toxic chemicals and pose serious health risks. Further complicating matters is that modern cooking fuels like liquid propane gas are not permitted in humanitarian shipments.
To address the issue, WCK is shipping wood and charcoal pellets and developed wood pellet burning stoves able to cook at the capacity needed by our kitchen. Wood and charcoal pellets are compact and allowed to enter the territory, making them the best alternative available at the moment. The specially designed stoves are now in use at our Field Kitchen, a welcome change after persistent rains impacted capacity to cook with less efficient wood stoves.
Making these efforts possible is WCK’s Procurement and Logistics Team based in Cairo, Egypt. There, our team runs a 54,000 square foot warehouse where we source, pack, and ship humanitarian supplies desperately needed in Gaza. Each day hundreds of pallets are packed with food, kitchen equipment, cooking fuel, and other supplies before making the long and complex 220 mile journey to Gaza. To date, we have dispatched more than 380 trucks to Gaza, 191 of which have so far reached our kitchen and our partners.
We continue exploring all ways to scale our response to meet the urgent need in Gaza. To increase access of WCK-provided humanitarian aid, we are working with authorities across the region to identify more border crossings that can be used by our trucks. Our team is also working with partners across Gaza to establish dozens of community kitchens—this would decentralize meal distribution, ensuring it takes less time for meals to get from the kitchen to Palestinians in need. The fuel situation in the territory will further deteriorate if the rate of bombardment and restrictions on humanitarian aid persist, so, we are exploring alternative energy sources, including solar, as a means to power our efforts. WCK is committed to doing whatever it takes to support innocent families stuck in the middle of the conflict.
The situation in Gaza is dire and unpredictable. As bombardment and ground attacks move further south, there are very few places left where families can go in search of safety. Loss of life is everywhere, and consistent lack of communication further complicates the situation. When warnings of impending bombardment are issued, the vital information can’t reach people who will be impacted. Our local team members and partners have lost loved ones. Still, they show up. Through their continued bravery, we are able to support the Palestinian people, and we are committed to stand by them to provide thousands of meals daily, maintaining their safety as a top priority.
Learn more about our Middle East response here. For real-time updates, follow WCK on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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