World Central Food Kitchen (WCK) – Granted $5000
WCK safely distributes individually packaged, fresh meals in communities that need support – for children and families to pick up and take home, as well as delivery to seniors who cannot venture outside. WCK is also now activating restaurants to help meet this demand by providing jobs for their staff and meals for those in need. Priority is to support small, independent restaurants that may otherwise not remain in business.
Starting in COVID “hot spot” cities, later expanding to more locations. Restaurants go through an onboarding process and COVID-19 safety training. WCK issues payment directly to the restaurant and, as a nonprofit, WCK ensures that 100% of all philanthropic donations go directly to meals and the restaurant workers. WCK will engage delivery drivers working for UberEats, DoorDash, GrubHub and Postmates putting these drivers back to work distributing meals. Lyft is supporting the initiative with free rides for restaurant workers in Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.
In New York City, WCK’s Relief Team with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies is taking over feeding operations for 16 NYC Health + Hospitals facilities, including 11 hospitals and 5 post-acute centers. Also in NYC, we are launching Free Farmers Markets 6 days a week across the city. Working with Farmer Rich, WCK is purchasing from farms that typically serve restaurants, taking produce that otherwise would be thrown away and bringing it directly to families in need. Our WCK teams are always on call. This week we heard about 700 employees of the Belmont Park race track and their families without food, so we brought fresh meals. We also got a call about frontline nurses supporting hospitals in NYC who hadn’t had a hot meal in 15 days. So we jumped into action, delivering 900 fresh cooked meals for these heroes! And we will be back every day.
