World Central Kitchen Has Fed People in Disaster and War Zones Around the Globe

Since its founding in 2010 by the chef José Andrés after a devastating earthquake in Haiti, the relief group World Central Kitchen has turned up at some of the globe’s biggest disasters, crises and conflicts, with the goal of doing what chefs do best: feed people.

The nonprofit group teams up with local food providers, governments and restaurateurs to quickly scale up and provide meals to people in need. Last week, in an update on its work in Gaza, the organization said the devastation and need there was “the most dire we’ve ever seen or experienced in our 15-year history.”

On Tuesday, the group said it would pause operations in Gaza and the region after it said seven of its workers were killed in an airstrike. The organization said the Israeli military was behind the attack.

The suspension will deprive the increasingly famished population of Gaza of a stream of humanitarian food aid, at a time when practically every source of provisions is critical for staving off what experts have been warning for weeks is an imminent famine.

The group says it operates 68 “community kitchens” in Gaza, and has sent in more than 1,700 trucks loaded with food and cooking equipment so far in nearly six months of war.

World Central Kitchen is a relatively new aid provider in Gaza, where people have been heavily reliant on humanitarian assistance for decades because of a long-running Israeli blockade. But the group has garnered notice by making bold moves. In March, it became the first entity to deliver aid by sea to the enclave in nearly two decades by building a makeshift jetty fashioned out of rubble.