Tuesday, Jan 17 at 7:00 PM – On February 24th, Ukraine was attacked, triggering a massive refugee crisis. World Central Kitchen began feeding refugees the next day. To date, WCK has provided about 180 million meals to Ukrainian refugees and to those who have remained in Ukraine. The effort involves hundreds of locations and food distribution points within Ukraine and seven other countries, especially Poland.
Register to attend in person or via Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/wyl-wck
During this talk I will describe and show my experiences volunteering with WCK in Przymsl, Poland, a small city near the border and where the trains from Ukraine arrive in Poland. In April I worked in the large refugee center, and in June I volunteered in the WCK Przymsl kitchen, where 10,000 hot meals and 5000 sandwiches were prepared each day. I will highlight the commitment of my fellow volunteers and the WCK staff. A common ethos evolved among volunteers whereby each person did more than just our twelve hour days with WCK – with such efforts at bringing medical supplies, buying suitcases, shoes, toys, and food treats, or helping to entertain the kids. This is a story of humanity at its best, amidst a tragedy caused by humanity at its worst.World Central Kitchen (WCK) is an American food aid organization started in 2010 by celebrity chef Jose’ Andres. They respond to hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and other disasters and immediately begin to feed people, provide water and provide food parcels. Every deployment is different, but they all make a difference.
Rich Comeau lives in Bedford, Massachusetts with his wife, Ali Malkin and their chocolate lab, Penny. Their son Evan, raised in Bedford, is now a student at Northeastern University. Rich’s professional background is in imaging science and software engineering. Rich and Ali were married 27 years ago in Wayland at Ali’s then family home, where she grew up. Early this year, Ali’s gentle encouragement to “do something rather than get frustrated” (about world events) was the inspiration for volunteering and a friend’s offhand suggestion that “you could go to Poland to help feed people” was the catalyst.