Nestlé has announced a partnership with World Central Kitchen (WCK), a collaboration which will help feed hungry people in areas that have been stricken by natural disasters. Nestlé will support WCK in an initial one-year agreement, and will donate CHF 1 million to its Climate Disaster Fund.
 
“We chose to partner with World Central Kitchen due to its close alignment with our business and our donations activities related to hunger relief and food access,” said Nina Kruchten, head of corporate donations at Nestlé. “Through its frontline work across the globe, WCK helps ease increasing food insecurity issues related to climate change. And keeping with Nestlé’s purpose, WCK does it through the power of food.”
 
The nonprofit has three main areas of focus: 1) providing meals to hungry people impacted by climate disasters at affected areas; 2) building resilience in frontline communities (helping farmers adapt to a rapidly changing climate by investing in local food producers and educating foodservice professionals and culinary students on the WCK model; and 3) changing systems which leave people hungry and thirsty by working with local and state governments to build scalable models.
 
These efforts are part of Nestlé’s Net Zero Roadmap. The company is also addressing its own operations and product portfolio to reduce its carbon footprint, along with supporting farmers and suppliers to implement regenerative agriculture practices. The company is also scaling up its reforestation program, given that nearly two-thirds of its emissions come from agriculture. The company aims to halve its emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.
 
Some examples of WCK’s work include the relief team that responded in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Batsirai which hit the east coast of Madagascar in February of this year. The team set up a WCK field kitchen, which used fresh ingredients from a local market for meals and employed local people to cook. WCK formed a network of local restaurant partners to cook for people in need following extreme rainfall and flooding in Bahia, Brazil at the end of last year. 19 food-related businesses across the U.S. Virgin Islands and Bahamas recently received WCK grants, one of which was the Sejah Farm of the Virgin Islands which plans to create an agricultural learning center.
 
WCK also responds to prolonged humanitarian crises, such as that in Ukraine. Nestlé has also supported this effort, and the WCK team has already provided over 27 million meals across eight countries to those affected by the war in Ukraine.