Reviving the Cherokee language is a full-time job – literally

by Kristi Eaton, Next City: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/reviving-the-cherokee-language-is-a-full-time-job-literally

A Cherokee language class in pre-COVID times (Photo credit: Cherokee Nation)

Though Jacob Chavez grew up around family members who spoke Cherokee - his grandmother was fluent and his father could understand the language - the 23-year-old didn’t learn it as a child.

Now, as a young adult, the Tahlequah, Oklahoma, resident is taking part in a unique program to train Cherokee Nation citizens and those interested in Cherokee culture to become highly proficient in the language by paying them to study it. It’s one that is quickly disappearing.

“It’s in my family and I would like to kind of like, build it back and strengthen it back amongst some of our younger generation that we have and then, it’s just a passion that I’ve had — probably since senior year of high school,” Chavez says. “I just wanted to have that part of my identity and I’ve just been working on it ever since. And I took a couple classes in high school and in college and then now I’m in this program.”

The Cherokee Language Master Apprentice Program is an immersion program for adult Cherokee language learners. The program is geared for novice language enthusiasts, and it is intense: The 40-hour-per-week program runs for two years. Participants are paid $10 per hour, says Howard Paden, Cherokee Nation Language Department executive director.

“It’s not a whole lot, but what we have learned is people who have been really dedicated to learn the language—you have to have that many consecutive hours so they have to have the ability to live and continue to put some groceries on the table and that sort of thing,” he says. “So, it’s worked out really well. You know, we haven’t expected to make them be rich by any means, but we do want them to survive while they learn the language. And so that incentive has allowed people to focus just on the language instead of other things.”

The program, which started about six years ago, has grown. It went from having four students per year to 16, so at any given time, there will be 32 participants taking part in the two-year program when fully filled, Paden says.

For the Cherokee Nation — the largest tribe in the United States by population with more than 380,000 citizens worldwide — the program is taking on extra importance. There are about 2,000 fluent Cherokee speakers, according to Paden, and in the last year, more than 100 have died, some due to COVID-19-related illnesses.

“Right now, we’re losing roughly 5% of our speakers per year,” Paden says. “But we know that it takes quite a bit of time [to learn the language] and it’s not happening organically in our communities anymore.”

Losing so many fluent elders is one reason that the tribe placed them among the top of their COVID-19 vaccination list. According to the tribe, since receiving the first distribution of vaccines on Dec. 14, the Cherokee Nation administered more than 6,500 vaccines, including about 900 Cherokee speakers, as of Jan. 19.

Due to the pandemic, the coursework for the Master Apprentice Program is taught online, something that Chavez says has been difficult but he is making work.

“I’m a very in-person type of learner,” he said. “I can’t really do this technology interface kind of stuff, but I’ve had to adapt and I’m willing to do that. I want to do whatever I’ve got to do to learn and so it’s just kind of a means to an end, really. If I’ve got to use a laptop and get on Zoom, I’ll do that. But I’d much rather be in a classroom. I think we all would. But this is the world we live in and it is what it is.”

The Cherokee Nation looked to several different initiatives to help guide them when creating the Master Apprentice Program. They looked at a program within the Sac and Fox Nation, also based in Oklahoma, as well as the Euchee (Yuchi) and even the Māori from New Zealand.

The Cherokee Nation’s reservation encompasses 14 countries in northeastern Oklahoma, including parts of Tulsa County. There are ongoing discussions to possibly host a class at one Tulsa high school, though Paden is unsure where that stands now with the pandemic — both the high school and the tribe are doing most things online now.

Chavez believes that a tribe can’t have culture without language, and so that’s why he focuses on the future and learning the language.

“Those two things are just kind of joined, and if you lose our language and you still have culture, it’s kind of just a history, almost, because language is so ingrained inside of a culture,” he said. “You know, there’s names for all this stuff like games and ceremonies and things like that. You need the language to use all that. And so it’s vital for our nation and other nations that struggle with their languages … we’ve lost that connection between our elders and our youth because mainly they didn’t want to pass on language. [T]he consensus is that we’re losing it, so we’re trying to build it back now. It’s really important for us.”

Kristi Eaton is a freelance journalist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Visit her website at KristiEaton.com or follow her on Twitter @KristiEaton.

Malcolm X is still misunderstood – and misused. Fifty-five years after his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, we still get much wrong about Malcolm X

by Omar Suleiman, Al Jazeera:  https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/2/21/malcolm-x-is-still-misunderstood-and-misused

Image: Al Jazeera

Every semester in which I teach a course on Muslims in the Civil Rights Movement at Southern Methodist University, I give my students a selection of quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X and ask them to guess who said what. So for example, I will posit the following two quotes and ask for their proper ascription:

“Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore, we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about.”

“The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”

And every single time, they have been unable to identify the first quote as belonging to Malcolm, and the second to Martin. But it is not just a few students that have gotten it wrong. The American education system and most mainstream portrayals of Martin and Malcolm have been simplistic and sanitising.

Martin is the perfect hero who preached non-violence and love, and Malcolm the perfect villain who served as his violent counterpart, preaching hate and militancy. The result is not just a dishonest reading of history, but a dichotomy that allows for Dr King to be curated to make us more comfortable, and Malcolm X to be demonised as a demagogue from whom we must all flee. Reducing these men to such simplistic symbols allows us to filter political programmes according to how “King-like” they are. Hence, illegitimate forms of reconciliation are legitimised through King and legitimate forms of resistance are delegitimised through Malcolm X.

Malcolm was never violent, not as a member of the Nation of Islam, nor as a Sunni Muslim. But Malcolm did find it hypocritical to demand that black people in the United States commit to non-violence when they were perpetually on the receiving end of state violence. He believed that black people in the US had a right to defend themselves, and charged that the US was inconsistent in referencing its founding fathers’ defence of liberty for everyone but them.

Malcolm knew that his insistence on this principle would cause him to be demonised even further and ultimately benefit the movement of Dr King, which is exactly what he had intended. Just weeks before his assassination, he went to Selma to support Dr King and willingly embraced his role as the scary alternative. In every interview, in his meeting with Dr Coretta Scott King, and elsewhere, he vocalised that the US would do well to give the good reverend what he was asking for, or else.

But he never actually said what the “or else” was, placing a greater urgency on America to cede to King’s demands. Malcolm had no problem playing the villain, so long as it led to his people no longer being treated like animals. And while King may have been steadfast in his commitment to non-violence, the thrust of Malcolm fully served its purpose.

As Colin Morris, the author of Unyoung, Uncolored, Unpoor wrote, “I am not denying passive resistance its due place in the freedom struggle, or belittling the contribution to it of men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Both have a secure place in history. I merely want to show that however much the disciples of passive resistance detest violence, they are politically impotent without it. American Negroes needed both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X …”.

But it was not just that Malcolm and Martin had complementary strategies to achieve black freedom, they also spoke to different realities. Malcolm spoke more to the Northern reality of black Americans who were only superficially integrated, whereas Martin spoke to the Southern reality where even that was not possible.

Malcolm also spoke to the internalised racism of black people that was essential to overcome for true liberation. As the late James Cone states, “King was a political revolutionary. Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary. Malcolm changed how black people thought about themselves. Before Malcolm came along, we were all Negroes. After Malcolm, he helped us become black.”

That is why, despite the diminishing of Malcolm in textbooks and holidays, he has been consistently revived through protest movements and the arts. He has lived through the activism of the likes of Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick, inspired the black power movement, and been an icon for American Muslims on how to exist with dignity and faith in a hostile environment.

And even in those claims to Malcolm as a symbol, Malcolm himself in the fullness of his identity is erased. In championing his movement’s philosophy, some seek to secularise him, intentionally erasing his Muslim identity. And in championing his religious identity, others seek to depoliticise him. This was a tension that Malcolm noted in his own life, saying: “For the Muslims, I’m too worldly. For other groups, I’m too religious. For militants, I’m too moderate, for moderates I’m too militant. I feel like I’m on a tightrope.”

Muslims too should be cautious not to sanitise Malcolm, as the US has sanitised Dr King. To restrict Malcolm solely to his Hajj experience is similar to restricting King solely to his “I have a dream” speech. Malcolm was a proud Muslim who never stopped being black. And while he no longer subscribed to a condemnation of the entire white race, he was unrelenting in his critique of global white supremacy.

Malcolm was consistently growing in a way that allowed him to not only champion his own people’s plight more effectively but to tackle a broader set of interconnected issues. And while history seems to posit Malcolm as his polar opposite, Dr King had begun to articulate many of the same positions that made Malcolm so unpopular.

In the words of the great James Baldwin, “As concerns Malcolm and Martin, I watched two men, coming from unimaginably different backgrounds, whose positions, originally, were poles apart, driven closer and closer together. By the time each died, their positions had become virtually the same position. It can be said, indeed, that Martin picked up Malcolm’s burden, articulated the vision which Malcolm had begun to see, and for which he paid with his life. And that Malcolm was one of the people Martin saw on the mountaintop.”

Perhaps it is time we ask why we only seem to celebrate one of them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Wales’s “One Planet” policy is transforming rural life

by Oliver Gordon, Reasons to be Cheerful: https://reasonstobecheerful.world/one-planet-development-policy-wales-rural-sustainability/

Image: Reasons to be Cheerful

It’s a cold winter morning in deepest rural Wales and Cassandra Lishman steels herself to face dawn’s frosty bite. She wakes up her 15-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter and leaves the insulated warmth of their cobwood roundhouse. She feeds the dogs, lets the chickens out of the coop and ambles up the hill to smash the ice in the sheep’s drinking trough. Her daughter feeds the horses, and her son lights a fire to kickstart the house’s solar thermal heating. 

In the afternoon, she harvests leeks for dinner and cuts up a batch of pumpkins to put in the freezer - to make space she takes out some red-currants and starts the week-long process of making jelly. In the summer, there’ll be hours more work to fit in: gardening, running willow-crafts workshops, building cobwood outhouses. “Then there’s the maintenance of all the fencing, which is constant,” she sighs. “This life isn’t for the faint-hearted.”

Cassandra and her husband Nigel. (Credit: Cassandra Lishman)

In Wales, the average citizen uses almost three times their share of the world’s resources. But Cassandra and her family are part of a groundbreaking scheme launched by the Welsh government in 2011 that aims to address that imbalance. The One Planet Development Policy (OPD) and its predecessor, Pembrokeshire’s Policy 52, allow people to bypass tight planning laws and move to protected areas to live ecologically sustainable lifestyles. 

So far, 46 individual smallholdings have signed on to the programs, which require residents to sustain themselves using the resources available on land they inhabit. The policy aims to combat an array of problems: rising temperatures, soil degradation, rural depopulation, a rampant housing crisis and wasteful global supply chains. But at its most basic level, the OPD is an experiment to prove that, by limiting consumption and allocating resources wisely, ecologically responsible development is possible, even in pristine environments. 

“A bold and creative policy”

“It was a bold and creative policy when it was introduced,” recalls Dr. Neil Harris, senior lecturer in statutory planning at Cardiff University. “You can’t build new homes in the open countryside - it’s a big no-no in the planning world. So it went against the grain. In Britain, there’s been a strongly protectionist approach to the countryside since World War II. It’s considered a place for recreation and food production, but not a place to live. It’s an attempt to protect nature from sprawl. Other European countries have similar containment policies.”

Participants on a ‘One Planet Experience’ course building a livestock barn. (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

The OPD policy in Wales is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. It comes with stringent restrictions requiring applicants to prove they can live within a set of defined environmental limits. To qualify for the scheme, there are four requirements. First, each household must use only their global fair share of resources, which has been calculated by the Welsh government as equivalent to six acres of land. Second, applicants must show that within five years this land can fulfill 65 percent of their basic needs, including food, water, energy and waste. Third, they must come up with a zero-carbon house design using locally sourced and sustainable materials. Finally, they must set up a land-based enterprise to pay the sort of bills - internet, clothes, council tax - that can’t be met with a subsistence lifestyle.

Cassandra’s smallholding, Plas Helyg, where she lives with her husband and two children, is nestled in bucolic Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales. It’s part of the Lammas eco-village, a 70-acre site that had previously been earning £3,000 (USD $4,100) a year from sheep grazing but now serves as home to nine OPD households. The Lammas received planning permission in 2009 under the county’s Policy 52 for low-impact living, which was subsequently scaled up into the national OPD policy.

A resident delivers milk to her Lammas neighbors by dogcart. (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

Plas Helyg gets all its electricity from its own solar array and the village’s shared hydropower. The lion’s share of the household’s heating comes from burning its own wood; the hot water comes from solar. Around 30 per cent of the family’s food comes from their land - they grow vegetables and fruit, and keep chickens for eggs and sheep for meat and wool. All their water comes from a local spring.

The household’s land-based enterprise involves growing willow, and the family harvests around 2,500 trees each year in order to make baskets and sculptures or sell cuttings and bundles. On the day we spoke, a customer was picking up an order of willow from Cassandra, so she bundled the branches her son had cut the previous day into ten kilogram parcels and dragged them down the drive for collection. She also had an Etsy order for a willow heart, so she soaked some twigs in gelid water and fashioned the malleable wood into shape before heading off to the nearest post office. For extra money, she holds willow-craft workshops for the local adult learning association. 

A house at the Lammas eco-village. “There can be tension between affordable living and sustainability, but in the OPD we have an exemplar of low-impact, low-cost development,” says one government minister. (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

From a regulatory perspective, someone applying for OPD planning permission needs to first prove their smallholding will come within the OPD limits within five years. From that point, the household must prove it is maintaining those standards by completing annual monitoring reports for the local council.

“In the annual report, we record how much food we’ve produced, how much willow we’ve sold, how many workshops I’ve done, etc.,” Cassandra explains. “We estimate how much firewood, water and electricity we’ve used for the year. We record all the animals’ costs as well, and our transport costs and biodiversity actions. And at the end of that we provide two figures, using general market prices, for how much we’ve produced and how much we’ve consumed.” According to Cassandra, for a family of four, those “basic needs” amount to around £10,000 (USD $13,700) a year; meaning an OPD household would need to produce equivalent to £6,500 (USD $8,900) either “of or from the land.”

Low-impact, low-cost development

Although its numbers remain small, the OPD policy is widely lauded as a success. It’s allowed a number of committed individuals to pivot to a more planet-friendly existence in a relatively affordable manner - Plas Helyg cost £30,000 (USD $41,100) all in. “There can be tension between affordable living and sustainability, but in the OPD we have an exemplar of low-impact, low-cost development. That’s exactly the kind of thing we want to support,” says Julie James, Minister for Housing and Local Government.

The interior of one of the village homes. (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

But the policy hasn’t been without its critics. In November, councilors in Carmarthenshire called for the OPD to be reviewed and potentially put on hold, citing resentment among locals who were finding it difficult to obtain planning permission to build homes on their land for their families. “Some of the early planning approvals for OPD smallholdings were at appeal, which suggests a degree of local political resistance to the policy,” says Harris. 

“But generally these tensions have been solvable,” says James. And as the policy has gone on, there’s been an increasing acceptance of it. The OPD community has done a lot of outreach - led by its volunteer advocacy group, the One Planet Council - to demonstrate their low impact, and to show that their new produce and services could provide a boost to local economies. “That’s won most people over,” says Harris.

An education event at the Lammas Community Hub. (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

Cassandra remembers the initial distrust of the Preseli Hills residents when the Lammas first arrived. “It’s a very Welsh-speaking area and there was a feeling we would dilute the local culture and language … But that completely disappeared in a year or two. It really helped that our children went to the local school and learned Welsh.”

“There’s no going back”

Looking forward, the policy is “absolutely here to stay,” says James, and the current government is looking to apply some of the things it’s learned from the program to its wider housing plans. OPD has been part of the inspiration for the Innovative Housing Program, where the government provides grants and loans to de-risk novel sustainable-building methodologies so that people can invest and scale them up. The government then uses the most successful methods in its standard social-housing construction and retrofitting. 

Constructing Cassandra and Nigel Lishman’s stable. (Credit: Cassandra Lishman)

The government also recently changed Welsh development policy to stipulate that all new developments on public land must consist of 50 per cent social housing and 50 per cent from a mixture of tenures, including cooperative housing, community land trusts (CLTs) and shared equity schemes. “There’s nothing to stop us doing a One Planet development as part of a CLT or a cooperative model,” says James (CLTs are community-run, nonprofit landholding organizations that help low-income buyers obtain homes). “Those kinds of affordable housing finance models would make the OPD lifestyle available to a wider segment of the population. There’s a CLT in Solva, Pembrokshire that’s doing just that.” 

Equally, the policy sets a perfect template for other small countries that have general constraints on development in their countryside, posits Harris. In England, the counties of Dartmoor and Cornwall are using the OPD framework to put in place similar initiatives, and countries such as Ireland and New Zealand are exploring the policy’s potential.  

Building a timber-frame roundhouse. Wales‘s Minister for Housing and Local Government says the OPD Policy is “here to stay.” (Credit: Tao Wimbush)

For Cassandra, the OPD life has been a tough but fulfilling experience. She remembers the hardship of moving, with a 14-year-old disabled son and two small children, to an empty field with nothing to their name - no electricity, no shelter but an old truck and a small yurt, and having to collect water with a wheelbarrow from a local tap. But would she do any of it differently? Not a chance.

“Once you’ve lived like this, there’s no going back. I love living close to the elements, I love living with the sun and the water as my electricity, I love growing my own food and trees, and being in touch with the earth. It’s such a nourishing and joyful existence.”

Being in the World: Social Movements and Social Change

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/being-in-the-world-social-movements-and-social-change-9d46240cc2ee

(Image: lifeasahuman.com)

Resilience as a form of resistance, especially to neoliberalism in the current epoch, is essential to those people who struggle to change the system and yet find it difficult to continue to do their work.

The history of social change tells us that it is collective social movements that create generally progressive social change from the grassroots upwards. This is the story of every revolution, of every progressive change, of every initiative taken that enhances freedom, and it is social movements that are critical to such progress.

Recently, there has been much said, particularly by politicians, about the virtues of the Magna Carta on its 800th anniversary. The perverse hypocrisy of their utterances serve to prove one thing — that we can have as many Magna Carta’s, as many laws, as many protections, as we want, but if the people we vote into power (in democratic nations) wish to usurp those protections, then it appears that there is little that can be done in response.

This presents a very difficult situation for people who are struggling for justice and fairness and who need to find some measure of resilience in order to keep up their struggle. Without resilience, a person can simply collapse emotionally, physically, and mentally in the face of onslaught of a political system that seeks to do nothing to support disadvantaged groups.

It is the collective nature of social change, through social movements, where people find their strength to stand up against injustice and inequality. In doing so, people find meaning, friendship, and strength. In fact, what many of them find is that very sense of community that makes up one the tools of resilience in the toolbox. This is one major reason why people are attracted to groups with similar values to their own. In the process, as has been the case with social movements across time, they are also major agents of social change. From the grassroots, they put moral and, on occasions, economic pressure (perhaps through strikes) on government to make progressive changes.

As resilience is learnt through experience, such involvement can be a positive enhancement to a person’s resilience. In addition, people learn much through the process of social change, especially enhancing their problem-solving skills. 

Social change always involves a struggle between progressive and conservative thought and action. As such, this struggle is fought out firstly at the grassroots level where the forces of conservatism often put quite draconian practices in place to control the people at the grassroots. As the progressive side starts to gain an advantage through sheer weight of numbers (and make no mistake about it, this takes years or decades), the struggle starts to move upwards until it reaches the houses of parliament and the courts when finally progressive laws are enacted. The lengthy nature of the struggle is precisely why resilience is necessary, and why resilience needs to be taught to individuals and groups to be able to continue the work they do.

The good life, balance and moderation, hospitality, and resilience: Aristotle and Epicurus

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/the-good-life-balance-and-moderation-hospitality-and-resilience-aristotle-and-epicurus-859008bebc8

(Image: thequotes.net)

A vital part of the resilience toolbox is the notion of exploring the good life. This has been a major topic of debate over the centuries, starting with the ideas put forward by Aristotle and Epicurus, both great Greek Philosophers of the Classical Age of Athens.

Aristotle professed that the ‘good life’ could be attained through balance and moderation in all aspects of life, from eating and drinking through to doing business. Rather than an Eastern circular notion of ‘completing the cycle’ through balance, for the Greeks, balance and moderation was more of a pendulum in which the further from the centre that the pendulum would swing, the less moderation and balance there was. As one guided their life towards the centre, meaning a lesser swing of the pendulum, the more likely one would be to find balance through moderation. There are similarities here to the notion of resilience. If one has extreme thoughts and emotional swings, that person is less likely to be resilient. This does not mean that the resilient person cannot be passionate. What it does mean is that the passion must be channelled into action. This is a moderation of passion and a very positive and powerful outcome.

Epicurus has a somewhat different view from Aristotle, but it is still associated with a search for the meaning of the ‘good life’. For Epicurus, the main motivation is to avoid pain. This is somewhat controversial in terms of resilience because it may well be that going through the downs of life is somewhat educative in terms of being able to rebuild one’s life. However, let us explore Epicurus’ position a little further.

Firstly, many people see Epicurus as the epitome of excess, hence the notion of epicurian delights and the associated connotations. However, Epicurus was a highly moderate character whose argument was that excess in anything would only lead to some form of pain. Thus, the consumption of too much food would lead to heartburn, feeling overly-full, or in the long run, obesity, all of which lead to either uncomfortable physical sensations, including a lack of fitness, or feelings of guilt.

Likewise, exercise was considered to be good if it was a stroll in the park or a long, leisurely walk, just enough to keep one relatively fit. But, exerting oneself too much would lead to muscle aches and so on, which would be considered to be painful. For Epicurus, life was about avoiding pain. As a result, he created a haven on his own property where his friends and acquaintances would come together to eat, drink and philosophise, but all in moderation of course.

The implications of this philosophy for resilience may well lie in the idea that moderation, as similar to Aristotle, may be one of the keys to resilience. However, the jury is out on the concept of avoidance of pain.

The concept of hospitality also plays a significant part in resilience, particularly the Greek interpretation of the concept. Hospitality or Xenia, as it is known in Greece, is much wider than the notion that we understand in the English-speaking world.

Xenia is the idea of welcoming and entertaining the stranger who comes from far away. Of course, trust comes into this, but it is seen as the obligation of the host, not as something reciprocal that might be repaid at some time in the future, but as ‘the right thing to do’, because the stranger is at least temporarily displaced and in need of support in an unfamiliar environment.

The value of hospitality for resilience is about the spirit of hospitality, that we should treat those around us with hospitality, so that a sense of community can be built. If a community is strong, this holds the potential for greater personal resilience of community members as a source of support. More on community later, but at this point, one can say that indeed hospitality as the basis of community IS the social support side of the resilience equation. The final point on hospitality is that it is a reciprocity that drives it; instead, it is done through a sense of ‘doing the right thing’ (even though reciprocity itself is a valuable tool as well).

In 2020, this organization has fed people through hurricanes, wildfires, an explosion and the pandemic. Here’s how

by Hasiba Haq, Ideas.Ted.com: https://ideas.ted.com/world-central-kitchen-feeds-people-jose-andres-nate-mook-crisis-pandemic-hunger/

Image: World Central Kitchen

Multiple hurricanes. Multiple wildfires. A deadly explosion. And a pandemic that won’t quit. 

2020 has been filled with crisis after crisis, with one relentless constant in their wake – hunger. And on the scene of as many crises as they can reach have been team members from  World Central Kitchen (WCK), a nonprofit founded by Spanish chef José Andrés that provides meals to those in need.

The WCK mission is simple: To feed people after disaster strikes. In 2010, Andrés went to Haiti to serve meals after the catastrophic earthquake. Inspired by the experience, he founded World Central Kitchen. Since then, WCK  has deployed relief teams around the world to sustain and nourish people when the worst happens. Despite their wealth of experience, 2020 has been a challenge … even for WCK. “It’s been the biggest, busiest year in our history — we’ve been on 5 continents, in 16 countries and almost 40 US states and territories,” says Andrés via email.

WCK credits its responsiveness to its ability to prioritize urgency. Their team understands that hunger requires immediate attention — there isn’t time to wait for ingredient approvals or fill out forms or navigate other bureaucratic hurdles. Instead, their staff and volunteers deploy as quickly as possible to disaster zones and work directly with those affected. The latter is a principle that’s central to their organization. “Everywhere we go, we get the same amazing lesson: A community knows what it needs, and we can achieve so much more when we listen to those needs and empower people to act locally,” says Andrés.

Another distinguishing feature of WCK is its ability to flex and adapt, something that many relief organizations and workers aren’t able to do. “You gotta be willing to go outside of the box and not wait around for somebody else to have the answer,“ says WCK CEO Nate Mook.

Mook joined WCK after leading and developing its #ChefsforPuertoRico initiative in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria where its team served 4 million meals to island residents. Since 2018, he has led the organization’s operations as well as its emergency and disaster-relief efforts. We sat down with him over Zoom to understand just how WCK gets meals to those who need them, no matter where they are.

Get eyes on the ground ASAP 

The first step to helping people in a crisis is to find out exactly what they’re facing. When an unexpected tragedy occurs, WCK dispatches an initial assessment team to the scene to understand exactly what happened and what is needed. The explosion in Beirut’s Port on August 4, 2020, was a perfect example. “We didn’t know what the situation was,” says Mook. “But we knew the damage was big, we knew that a lot of people were probably displaced, we knew that a lot of folks probably weren’t going to have electricity for a while, and we knew that a lot of restaurants, grocery stores and businesses were destroyed or damaged. But until you get on the ground, you know nothing.”

The humility of admitting they know nothing is essential to WCK’s work — leaving them open to input about how they can be most helpful and effective. Within 36 hours of the explosion, WCK had two members on the ground, who immediately connected with locals. “Their job is to put eyes on the situation, go to the places that were impacted, talk to the local leaders in those areas,” says Mook. “In Beirut, we connected with a bunch of local nonprofits that worked there.” They were able to determine where people were displaced, what the gaps were in terms of access to food, as well as what other organizations were already doing. These initial assessments are integral, because they reveal how urgent a situation is and how much effort and coordination is required on WCK’s part.

While an explosion is impossible to predict, extreme weather events like hurricanes can be tracked and monitored, which provides WCK with a huge advantage. “When it’s a hurricane and we roughly know what’s coming, we can pre-stage,” says Mook. “We can get people on the ground, set up a kitchen , and get everything ready to go. As Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in September 2018, we were cooking as it was still hitting, delivering meals to shelters, firefighters, police and the emergency operation center.”

Lead with empathy

“Some of us assume that everyone has 72 hours of food in their house, but the reality is that a lot of people don’t,” says Mook. “When the grocery stores, electricity and water are all out, food is something you need now — it can’t wait until tomorrow or the next day.”

A guiding principle for WCK is to lead with empathy. This includes recognizing that not everyone is able to evacuate during a disaster. Some don’t have the resources to flee or they may not be physically mobile or they may not want to leave their home behind. WCK recognizes they’re on the scene in service to a community — not just giving to them. “It’s a subtle shift, but I think it is so critical,” says Mook.

Another part of leading with empathy is recognizing that not everyone is able — or ready — to ask for help. “It is not an easy thing to say: ‘I need your help,’” explains Mook. The WCK team has learned to be more pointed in their inquiries. Mook says, “You ask questions, like  ‘What’d you eat today?’, ‘What are your kids eating right now?’, ‘What type of food?’, and ‘Do you have enough water?’ Once you start asking these questions, then everything starts to crumble and you realize people need support.”

No need to reinvent the wheel — just add to it

Mook says WCK looks for smart and effective solutions that are already available on site, instead of introducing new ones. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, the island was devastated. Neighborhoods were demolished, electricity was wiped out, and residents needed food and water. Humanitarian responders like FEMA tried to ship bread over from the mainland US, but they faced hurdles because many ports in Puerto Rico had been destroyed.

WCK took a different approach altogether. “We just said, ‘Well, how about we make sure that the local bakeries have fuel for their generators, fresh water and ingredients so they can start producing bread on the island again?’” recalls Mook. “That type of thinking is a no-brainer, right? Yet it’s often not how things are done.”

An important question that WCK always asks: “What and who are already there?” Their teams connect with community members and map resources by finding out the locations of local suppliers and kitchens and who already has access to food. “We make phone calls to chefs, and that’s what’s amazing about the chef community,” says Mook. “You make a phone call to somebody who makes a phone call to someone else, and before long, you’re connected with all the chefs in that area.”

During August’s Hurricane Laura, mapping resources was important. Nobody knew exactly where Laura would make landfall, but WCK wanted to prepare itself. So they sent some team members already based in Louisiana to Lake Charles, a city that was predicted to be in the storm’s path. They ended up staying the night at a local casino,  connected with its management, toured the space including its kitchen, and let management know about WCK’s work.

When Laura hit Lake Charles, says Mook, “we immediately reached back out to the casino.” Because the casino didn’t have water or power, WCK’s team got hold of a food truck — using it as a mobile relief kitchen — and started serving meals out of a parking lot. A few days later, after the casino had generators and access to clean water, casino staff contacted WCK. “They said they weren’t opening the casino to the public, so come on in,” says Mook. “Within four days, we had accommodations at the casino, we had a massive kitchen there, and we were able to tap into local knowledge and local resources.”

In recent times, much of WCK’s work has been driven by the climate crisis. “We find ourselves responding to more and more climate disasters each year — the wildfires up and down the West Coast of the US are getting worse, the Atlantic hurricane season is longer and more destructive, and climate change will continue to cause more tragedies around the world,” says Andrés. “But what drives me is knowing that, after the storms clear and the fires are extinguished, there’s a real opportunity to build resilience into a community against future disasters.”

Benefit from knowledgeable volunteers

While WCK’s main office is based in Washington DC, its full-time staff — consisting of roughly 50 people — is located all over the world. It also relies on a global network of passionate contractors and volunteers. The volunteers are a mix of people local to the disaster area but also include seasoned supporters, such as a retired chef named Elsa, who fly in to help. “She’s not an employee at World Central Kitchen, but she’s part of the family,” Mook says warmly. Elsa is based in California, and she started working with WCK during wildfires. Since then, she’s travelled all over the world with them. This September, she led the feeding operations for the California wildfires. WCK covers the costs of all their food and non-food supplies by using funds raised from individual and corporate donations.

After an initial WCK team assesses the damage and the resources available in a disaster area, a WCK chef relief team comes in to get the work started. Experienced helpers like Elsa know how to keep operations going by organizing the local volunteers who frequently step up to help their neighbors in need. “After a disaster, people in the community — folks who aren’t as worse off as others — want to come in and volunteer,” says Mook.

Once the local volunteers are established, the WCK personnel can slowly pull back. They’ll oversee operations for a few weeks, and when things are relatively stable, they’ll shift their teams to the next place in need. After spending a few weeks in Louisiana in August, the WCK teams moved onto Oregon to help those affected by wildfires.

Get ready to toss out established ways of doing things 

Even though WCK has their own tried-and-true methods for doing their work, they recognize that every disaster is different. “The first rule of feeding people is adapting to the circumstances,” according to Mook.

Sometimes, that can mean recognizing what people need is not what you’re used to providing. “When we were in the Bahamas responding to Hurricane Dorian [in August 2019], we were having to deal with water filtration and getting water to places for a short period of time,” says Mook. “We were also performing medical evacuations. We’d go in with a helicopter to drop off food, and we’d bring back people [and take them to medical care]. In a disaster, you gotta be willing to make those quick decisions and you can’t expect somebody else to come in with the answer. You have to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to figure out what I can do and then do it.’”

Adapt yet again when the unexpected — an ongoing pandemic — happens

Of course, one of the most challenging crises in 2020 has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike natural disasters, which tend to be concentrated in a single area, the pandemic affected most of the world, making it hard to figure out where to begin. WCK realized it couldn’t be everywhere so they pivoted again. “Normally, when we work with restaurants, we partner with them or take over their restaurant and set up a big kitchen operation there and it becomes our operation,” explains Mook. “In this case, what we said is ‘You do what you know how to do — you do the meals, you buy from your suppliers, you manage it. I’m just going to tell you how many meals I need and where it needs to go. So that was a very new thing for us, because we weren’t the ones doing the cooking.”

WCK’s Restaurants For The People has two goals: Keeping small restaurants and food businesses open while providing fresh meals to first responders, front-line workers and those struggling with hunger. WCK has worked with over 2,000 restaurants in 400 cities in the US, directly disbursing over $135 million to them and serving over 12 million meals to people who need them. And the program has had positive ripple effects, with demand from restaurants helping keep farmers, fisheries and ranchers in business.

For Andrés and WCK, regardless of the number of disasters that life brings, they’re committed to innovating and pushing forward. “At the beginning of 2020, we had no idea what the year would bring, and now our team of chefs, relief workers, volunteers and supporters has grown bigger beyond even what I could have dreamed,” says Andrés. “When I founded the organization in 2010, we knew there were big  opportunities to change the way that disaster relief is done and we’ve just started to scratch the surface of those changes. There is one thing I know, which is what drives our team every single day: Wherever hungry people need to eat, we will be there.”

All images: Courtesy of World Central Kitchen. 

World Central Kitchen is the recipient of a grant from The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative that is unlocking social impact on a grand scale. Every year The Audacious Project — which is housed at TED — selects and nurtures a group of bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges and gets them launched thanks to an inspiring group of donors and supporters.

Watch José Andrés’s 2017 TED Talk here: