After WCK has led an emergency food relief response, our resilience team evaluates the food ecosystem and will make long-term commitments of support when we know we can successfully address chronic food system challenges with our unique mix of talents and resources. Through locally led approaches, our food resilience programs advance human and environmental health, offer access to professional culinary training, create jobs, and improve food security for the people we serve.

This work began after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with the belief that food can be an agent of change in distressed communities.

From the very beginning — as our founder Chef José Andrés witnessed the terrible health and environmental impacts of preparing meals on open wood and coal fueled fires — Clean Cooking has been a core program. To date we have built or rehabilitated 150 school and other community kitchens in Haiti and Guatemala and aim to bring this effort to other countries soon.

Beyond these institutional kitchens, we also work to help women gain affordable access to safer and cleaner cooking solutions in their homes and small businesses by pursuing and advocating for macro level system changes that will advance the clean cooking sector as a whole.

Our Kitchen Skills & Safety program complements our Clean Cooking solutions with food safety and sanitation training by culinary professionals to school cooks in underserved communities. To date, WCK has trained more than 705 school cooks responsible for feeding more than 80,000 students in Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras.

École des Chefs is a culinary school in Port-au-Prince, led by one of the most respected chefs in Haiti, Mi-Sol Chevallier. Each year, more than 40 students graduate from the program with the skills and confidence they need to begin their careers as professional chefs in local hotels and restaurants.

And coming soon, our newest education offering will be a Chef Relief Training program that will certify culinary professionals in WCK’s unique methodology of emergency food response.

Finally, our Food Producer Network partners with smallholder farmers, fishers, and small food businesses to promote the development of sustainable food systems that encourage the growing and consumption of locally produced foods. Through this work, our goal is to not only improve food security but also to help communities build their food resilience against future disasters. Originally launched in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Food Producer Network now also operates in the US Virgin Islands, The Bahamas, and Guatemala. Further expansion is planned to other Caribbean and Central American locations by the end of 2021.