Village Invest Charity: Helping Ukraine
World Central Kitchen
On February 24, Russia launched a large-scale attack on neighboring Ukraine, invading the country on several fronts. As a result, more than one million Ukrainians have fled their homes in search of safety, with many more expected to follow. Working at a 24-hour pedestrian border crossing in southern Poland, World Central Kitchen began serving hot, nourishing meals immediately. Now, we’ve expanded our efforts to serve people across the region in Romania, Moldova, and Hungary. World Central Kitchen is also partnering with restaurants inside of Ukraine to get hot meals to anyone in need.
World Central Kitchen was founded sin 2010 by Jose Andres after a huge earthquake devastated Haiti. He was cooking alongside displaced Haitians in a camp, and says he found himself getting schooled in how to cook black beans the way they wanted: mashed and sieved into a creamy sauce.
Their message: “Food relief is not just a meal that keeps hunger away. It’s a plate of hope. It tells you in your darkest hour that someone, somewhere, cares about you.This is the real meaning of comfort food. It’s why we make the effort to cook in a crisis. We don’t just deliver raw ingredients and expect people to fend for themselves. And we don’t just dump free food into a disaster zone: we source and hire locally wherever we can, to jump-start economic recovery through food.”
“After a disaster, food is the fastest way to rebuild our sense of community. We can put people back to work preparing it, and we can put lives back together by fighting hunger.”
“Cooking and eating together is what makes us human.”
Since their early days, World Central Kitchen has helped all over the world. They fed an island after Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico. They fed tens of millions struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic. They put boots on the ground when a blast devastated Beirut, bushfires ripped through Australia, and a volcano transformed a Spanish island.
They were under a bridge with thousands of asylum seekers in Texas, in a demolished Kentucky town after brutal tornadoes, on the Louisiana coast when yet another enormous hurricane made landfall.
“We have traveled a long way together, with support from people just like you.”
“We have witnessed enough disasters to know that food relief is not enough. So we have invested in our Food Producer Network to help create resilience ahead of the next disaster. We train aspiring chefs in skills and safety to build their careers and the food economy. We advocate for more hunger relief and better nutrition. We want clean cookstoves in the homes of the one billion cooks whose health, and the climate, are in danger, when all they want to do is feed their families.”
Please join us today in this charity’s incredible mission to help the victims of the war in Ukraine by donating below!