World Central Kitchen

World Central Kitchen (WCK) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that provides food relief. It was founded in 2010 by Spanish American chef and restaurateur José Andrés following the earthquake in Haiti, and has subsequently responded to Hurricane Harvey, the 2018 lower Puna eruption, 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, the ongoing Gaza humanitarian crisis, and the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.
The organization has suffered casualties in areas of armed conflict, including one volunteer in Kharkiv in 2023 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and ten aid workers during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, seven in the April 2024 aid convoy attack, three in November 2024 and one in March 2025.
The NGO has contributed to the provision of meals in Australia, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, the United States, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine. It has also operated culinary training programs in Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Zambia and Peru.
In late February 2022, Andrés and World Central Kitchen responded to multiple locations, including in border areas and in conflict zones such as hard-hit Kharkiv, Ukraine, to distribute meals during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. By March 2, 2022, WCK had opened eight kitchens on the Poland–Ukraine border.
A local volunteer was killed in 2023 by a Russian missile strike on his apartment in Kharkiv.
In response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis, World Central Kitchen has been contributing to food deliveries to the Gaza Strip. As of March 2024, it has provided more than 32 million meals.
World Central Kitchen has supplied food to airdrop operations by foreign states, as well as to the NGO Proactiva Open Arms performing maritime deliveries.
On 2 April, WCK announced a pause to operations after Israeli airstrikes killed seven employees (see § Casualties).
In February 2024, Proactiva Open Arms announced that their Open Arms tugboat would conduct delivery to the Gaza Strip towing a barge of food and water provided by World Central Kitchen. The ship had been reportedly stationed in Cyprus since 16 February.
The president of Cyprus had proposed a maritime humanitarian corridor at a conference in Paris in early November, and held conversations the following month with the Egyptian president and Jordanian king. According to Cypriot authorities, there were also "technical discussions" with Israeli officials. In an interview with Tel Aviv Radio, the Israeli foreign minister said in December that "It can start immediately".
On 11 March, the ship was in Cyprus awaiting departure, after Cypriot authorities claimed that permission had been granted. The goods had reportedly been checked by Cypriot officials with Israeli oversight. It contained "nearly 200 tons of food".
The shipment arrived on 15 March at a beach south of Gaza City. According to WCK, this was the first boat to reach Gaza in nearly two decades.
On 25 July, 2022, a Russian missile attack on a Chuihuiv community center killed two WCK volunteers. Sardor Hakimov, a 36-year-old Uzbek migrant to Ukraine, and another volunteer, only identified as Viktoria, were the victims. On 2 June 2023, a WCK volunteer in Kharkiv, a 60-year-old Ukrainian man identified as Igor, was killed as the result of a Russian missile strike on his apartment. On 10 July, four Ukrainian WCK volunteers identified as Tatyana, Iryna, Olga, and Vitaliy were killed in a Russian missile strike on a community center in Orikhiv.
On 1 April 2024, seven WCK employees – six people with foreign citizenship and a Palestinian driver – were killed in Deir al-Balah by a series of Israeli airstrikes. After the incident, WCK announced an immediate pause to operations in Gaza. The casualties included: