World Central Kitchen commits $1 billion to families impacted by the climate crisis

November 9, 2021

World Central Kitchen has announced a ten-year, $1 billion commitment in support of communities impacted by extreme weather events caused by the climate crisis.

Seeded with $50 million of a $100 million gift from Jeff Bezos made in July in recognition of WCK founder José Andrés's courage and civility, the Climate Disaster Fund will focus on three areas: feeding hungry people in the immediate aftermath of climate disasters; building resilience in frontline communities; and changing the systems that leave people hungry and thirsty. To those ends, WCK will expand its Food Producer Network, which began in Puerto Rico and has been launched in the Bahamas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guatemala to provide local food producers with grants, training, and market access to empower communities to be more self-sustainable and climate-resilient; launch in 2022 the WCK Climate Disaster Corps, built on the Chef Relief Training curriculum, which prepares local culinary students, cooks, veterans, and others to respond to disasters using the WCK model; and continue to develop Community Relief Centers, a partnership with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Archewell Foundation, in regions prone to climate disasters.

In 2020, WCK spent more than $250 million feeding communities in the United States and around the world impacted by disasters including multiple hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"While the $1 billion fund is an ambitious commitment, it represents a fraction of what is needed to meet the immediate food and water needs of our fellow human beings suffering from a climate crisis of our making," WCK said in a statement. "Our goal is to innovate and develop models that can be replicated across the world — and supported by the only people who can truly scale solutions to states, countries, and continents: our political leaders."

(Photo credit: World Central Kitchen)
Source: PND

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