World Central Kitchen providing disaster relief and food sustainability one day at a time…

World Central Kitchen has provided disaster relief and brought food to those in need. José Andrés founded World Central Kitchen after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti with the belief that food can be an agent of change.

Food can empower communities and strengthen economies….and so it did in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. During Maria’s aftermath, World Central Kitchen took a team of chefs to Puerto Rico in September 2017 and opened 25 kitchens that served a total of 3.6 million meals. The #ChefsForPuertoRico continue to be active with the community by empowering chef and food truck partners through rebuilding grants and investing in agriculture, fishing and culinary training.

This is how the program «Plow to Plate» was born. As World Kitchen arrived in Puerto Rico, they began to learn about the issues with food security and crop sustainability in the island…where after Maria around 98% of the food supply in Puerto Rico is imported. World Central Kitchen in collaboration with other organizations drafted an agricultural report for better understanding of Puerto Rico’s food sustainability issues.

The focus is on agriculture, specifically:

• Farmer sector exclusively
• Bee products
• Holistic projects (fishing/ distribution projects)

They fund individual farmers, community based groups and individually owned small businesses. The program has two rounds and then they help provide personalized workshops according to the organization’s needs.

What World Central Kitchen Funds:

• Farm equipment, water collection or irrigation systems, and similar.
• Purchase and/or construction of green houses, storage sheds, cool storage facilities, chicken coops and similar farm infrastructure.
• Seeds, saplings/trees, plant plugs, and similar.
• Restaurant or distributor equipment.

These past round they gave 380 millions to 24 projects in the island (15k per project)! Join their newsletter and keep tuned when the next round of applications open up!

In other topics, World Central Kitchen just began another initiative to help during the government shutdown in Washington, DC.  After 26 days of being furloughed, federal employees are going through their own crisis. The #ChefsForFeds initiative, seeks to support hundreds of thousands of federal employees impacted by the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Thanks to World Central Kitchen for always being there during difficult times!

Source:  Mikol Hoffman, Puerto Rico Program Manager, https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org/