By Evan Cameron | Associate, Development Writing
Founded in 2010 by Chef Jose Andres, World Central Kitchen (WCK) is first to the frontlines providing fresh meals in response to crises. Applying our model of quick action, leveraging local resources, and adapting in real time, WCK has served more than 500 million nourishing meals around the world.
In late March 2025, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Southeast Asia, centering on Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar. The temblor occurred at a shallow six miles causing widespread destruction to buildings, roadways, and other major public infrastructure. While the true impact varies across different sources, it is believed the strike-slip shock—the most powerful earthquake to strike Myanmar since 1912—claimed the lives of more than 5,000 local residents and damaged or completely destroyed over 130,000 homes and buildings in the affected area. The destruction also crippled key energy and internet infrastructure sites, causing phone and internet outages nationwide. The severe structural damage, heavily restricted communication lines, and the overwhelming loss of life spurred a long and difficult road to recovery for local communities impacted by the earthquake.
WCK mobilized our Relief Team immediately after the earthquake struck, navigating severe travel restrictions and supply line disruptions in order to start providing critically-needed emergency relief to impacted communities as quickly as possible. In the midst of severe communication outages as well as an 11-day national holiday shutdown, WCK was able to secure a reliable supply chain system alongside a strong network of over 20 local restaurant partners within a few short days of our arrival. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with our local restaurant partners, WCK began serving 8,000-10,000 hot meals daily, scaling up to nearly 20,000 meals each day at the height of our response. Restaurant-provided meals not only brought comfort to local communities in the form of warm, chef-quality meals, they also provided WCK with a means of boosting the local economy by reinvesting critically-needed funds back into local disaster-affected businesses.
WCK Relief Teams also distributed ready-to-eat meal kits, family cooking kits, and fresh produce boxes, drastically expanding our ability to support impacted communities. In collaboration with local businesses and non-profit organizations, and with the hope that familiar flavors would bring extra comfort during a time of great need, WCK specially curated our food kits to feature the ingredients and produce typically used in local recipes. Through both warm meals and food kits, our teams served up to 200,000 meals daily in Myanmar. WCK-provided meals and food kits were distributed to first responders, government shelters, NGO-operated shelters, community sites, and hospitals. One local partner, Step-In Step-Up (SISU), teamed up with WCK to assemble and distribute thousands of dry food kits. Jackie, the founder of SISU, shared with our team: “So many of our trainees come from affected areas, so working with WCK is giving them some motivation to carry on.”
In total in Myanmar, World Central Kitchen worked with local restaurants, businesses, chefs, and volunteers to serve nearly 6 million meals to communities impacted by the earthquake. We are extremely grateful for your support, which helps make our mission to feed crisis-affected communities a reality. Together, we helped bring not only nourishment, but also comfort, hope, and dignity, to families in Myanmar, one plate of food at a time. Thank you for your support.
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