July 8th, 2024

186,000 Meals Served & ARK Ukraine Has Moved

http://eepurl.com/iSWu7s

ARK served 184,000 meals between the day we began serving food on March 8th, 2023 and the day we began to dismantle our kitchen in southern Lviv on April 15th 2024. Even as we dismantled, transported and reassembled the kitchen in another location, we continued to serve another 2000 meals.

Our new location on the north side of Lviv is near a forest that we can collect wood from for thr winter, it is near the train station where we often serve food, many shelters, and manufacturing centers. This newsletter talks about the move, it shows pictures of the recent months and it links to many new pages on the website including photo archives and news articles

This newsletter also eludes to some of thr things i’ll be talking about it next weeks newsletter, including the recent student internships, presentations across the USA, and much more.


March 4th, 2024:

Aloka’s Essay About ARK, At One year

http://eepurl.com/iLKmNg

Aloka is a single mother from Ukraine who has been running the ARK in Lviv since the first year of the war. She wrote this moving essay about about what it’s like to run the kitchen for two years during a war.


November 4th, 2023:

100,000th meal on ARK’s Birthday

http://eepurl.com/iC1KNs

ARK served its 100,000th meal on the one year anniversary of its nonprofit birthday. This newsletter lists some of the amazing coincidences that marked its whole first year, and thanks some of the many people who make it possible, among many updates.

September 13th, 2023:

http://eepurl.com/izbQws

75,000 Meals Served in Ukraine

july 24th, 2023:

50,000 Meals Served in Ukraine and $39,149.35 Raised So Far In 2023

http://eepurl.com/iwodvk

Today the ARK-Lviv crew served their 50,000th meal after 20 weeks of continuous operation! ARK-Lviv has been delivering hot meals to refugees in shelters and community-centers all around Lviv and to the refugees entering and exiting the city at the train station. Despite the difficulty of regular business closures during air raid alerts, and the danger of occasional missile strikes, the crew of ARK-Lviv has kept the kitchen open, operating, and cooking the most incredible food.

Update: February 23rd, 2023-

The ARK-Ukraine team will ramp up food production tomorrow in Lviv, Ukraine for the anniversary of the beginning of the war.

We have secured a lease for a large space in a local park in Lviv for the next ARK location. This will complement the current Catholic Church location and more than double our capacity in the country, as there is enough space to set up many additional tents.

The skilled ARK-Ukraine team who has been building and operating the kitchen in Lviv, is prepared to set up additional ARKs in Odessa and Kharkiv when we secure additional funding. Because ARKs are manufactured and run by locals and refugees, the local economy benefits in many ways

2022 Ukraine details can be found in our December newsletter

Update: September 2nd 2022–

We are returning to Ukraine for the third time on Equinox, this time to set up the first kitchen in Lviv. After a long summer of translation and blueprints and communications with an 11 hour time zone difference, all the necessary elements of the manufacturing are complete, and the kitchens can be built and distributed regularly into the winter.

 

Altruist Relief Kitchen has been in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. We’ve been preparing to set up the off-grid wood-fired industrial kitchens that can provide humanitarian aid during a gas, propane and electricity shortage, at the onset of a long Ukrainian winter.

Rather than send one kitchen from the USA, we established our ability to manufacture ARK’s in Ukraine. Now almost all of the money spent on our project goes to the Ukrainians who build and administer ARK in Ukraine, and we can provide an increasing number of hot meals and fresh water.

Because these radically efficient wood-fired kitchens do not need gas, propane, or electricity, they will be able to function uninterrupted through the winter war. Because ARK is radically financially transparent, you will be able to follow where all our money comes from, and how all of it is spent.