To address the food emergency, the NGO World Central Kitchen provides hot meals to refugees in collaboration with local restaurants, while on social media people are cooking to raise funds.
Refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine need everything, starting with the essentials: water and food. A hot meal is necessary to survive and to keep out the cold. To respond to the emergency, the United Nations' World Food Programme has launched an operation to send money and food to Ukrainians leaving the country: according to Unhcr estimates, this amounts to one million people, a number set to grow in the coming days to reach 3.5 million refugees.
Volunteers are also at work at reception points along the border: the NGO World Central Kitchen, founded in 2010 in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti by chef José Andrés, has been operating since the start of the conflict in southern Poland, at eight border crossings with Ukraine such as Medyka, and reports having already distributed thousands of meals, also thanks to collaboration with dozens of Polish restaurants through the #chefsforukraine initiative. WCK is also providing support with food preparation to local restaurants in five Ukrainian cities, including Odessa and Lviv. Last weekend, refugee children also received candy floss, a small surprise to bring a smile back to their faces.
And then there are those who use food as a means of raising donations. Drawing on the experience of #CookforSyria, Russian chef Alissa Timoshkina and chef Olia Hercules, Ukrainian, have launched #Cookforukraine. The two women, both 37 and based in London, are inviting people to support Ukraine by cooking traditional dishes and making donations on the Justgiving page. More than £111,000 has been raised so far, which will be donated to Unicef.
From the Bakers Against Racism initiative, the hashtag #bakeforukraine has emerged, inviting bakers, chefs and cooking enthusiasts to organise sales of baked goods to raise funds for organisations active in the refugee emergency. And some have thought of going further: Laura Lazzaroni and Laurel Evans — the former an Italian writer, the latter an American influencer — friends and both passionate about leavened baking, will be organising online workshops on bread and Ligurian focaccia in the coming weeks, asking those who wish to participate for a minimum donation of 5 euros to be directed to the Unhcr and World Central Kitchen.
New York's most celebrated Ukrainian restaurant, Veselka, will donate 100 per cent of the proceeds from every bowl of borscht (the traditional Ukrainian soup) sold at the venue. Similar initiatives are also multiplying in Italy: at PizzAut, the pizzeria in Cassina de' Pecchi (Milan) that offers employment to autistic young people to promote social inclusion, the "No War" pizza has been added to the menu in recent days, with its proceeds going to the Ukrainian people.
The Azotea restaurant in Turin has added the Supernova dessert to its menu, donating the proceeds from every dessert served at the restaurant to the Italian Red Cross, which is active in Ukraine. The creation is inspired by the AntiPavlova cake by Dinara Kasko, a Ukrainian pastry designer who shares accounts of the conflict from the "destroyed city" of Kharkiv on Instagram.