How we cooked 5.000 hot meals for Ukrainian refugees 🇺🇦

Intro

As many know by now, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been causing immense pain and suffering for the people of Ukraine, having displaced over 10 million people so far, 3 million of which have fled the country (as of March 23rd, 2022). They have moved mostly to neighbouring countries like Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Belarus, Russia, but mainly Poland, which has received the bulk of incoming refugees, and a small percentage of these end up in Western Europe or the rest of the world. Being such a big city with a well connected train station, Berlin is a main hub for the people coming from Poland who want venture further in the west. Many of the arriving families are travelling by train, carrying only what they are able to in a small suitcase, a backpack, a supermarket bag, or even arriving with only the clothes on their backs, for several days, and without a warm meal (or any meal at all).

Humble Beginnings

When seeing these scenes so close to us, my wife Daiane got word from social media that bringing warm meals to them would be a good idea. We had some disposable containers at home, a couple kilos of lentils, legumes and vegetables, spices, which she gathered and started cooking. We brought the first batch of around 40 lentil soup portions to the central station, noticed it was very welcome, and immediately decided we could and should do a bit more. During lunch, we reached to a couple of Whatsapp groups to ask for donations from friends, thinking we would gather a couple hundred euros and bring in the vicinity of a hundred meals a day, but (oh boy!) we were mistaken. The fundraiser immediately exploded, and we noticed something much bigger was coming our way, we had many food, material, appliances, and cash donations right away, as well as people offering their time and effort to work. Some neighbours of ours were detrimental to bootstrap the whole operation as well, introducing us to people in the food industry from the neighbourhood, and even joining us to deliver the second batch of the first day, of around 40 soups, on a cargo bycicle.

Quick Expansion

On the second day, a neighbour lent us a big 30 liter cooker, a neighbouring cafe (Zazza Cafe Moabit) helped me to get inside a Wholesale supermarket for our first big purchase using the donatives, while people started cooking at our house. These first few folks helping with the cooking ended up being the managerial core of the group, arranging shifts of helpers from morning to evening, to produce huge amounts of lentil soup throughout the following days. After 80 soups were delivered in the first day, we jumped to 400 in the second. After cleaning up the vegetable and lentil sections in the neighbouring supermarkets, we asked for the awesome people at the Zazza Cafe to help us by making a purchase at the Wholesale supermarket again, they did so, but donated everything to our initiative, not accepting payment 💛💙

The Volunteer Welcoming Commitee

The welcoming committee in the Berlin Central Station was entirely formed by volunteers, and, same as our operation, was very chaotic in the beginning, but was quickly getting organised. What was only a couple of tables and people in the first day, became a huge operation with hundreds of volunteers ready to welcome the refugee families around the clock, providing food, supplies, and anything people would need when arriving to a new country after a long trip.

Coming to Stability

We quickly noticed that a larger amount of food would be very welcome, and prepared an operation to produce 4 deliveries of around 200 soups per day (we never did so, but we were ready to do so on a short notice). From the third day onwards, I would wake up and start cooking at 7 in the morning for a first delivery at 10am, and people would take over for following deliveries at 2pm, 6pm and 10pm, but, as things got organised and more volunteers and restaurants started bringing food to the Central Station besides us, on most days we were able to skip one of these deliveries, stabilising at around 700 portions daily. At the end we had three 30 liter pots cooking all throughout the day, line cooks chopping vegetables from 9am to 9pm, quickly migrating to packing the soups when ready and delivering them in huge boxes by car (when we had volunteer drivers) or using Uber when no driver was available.

In the eighth day (March 10th), we got word that the Berlin Senate would be taking over the welcoming committee and that all the volunteers would not be needed anymore, which would give us the Friday to rest and regroup, planning the next steps, as we imagined our cooking would be welcome somewhere else besides the welcoming committee. All the incoming refugees had to stay somewhere, right? And a warm lentil soup might be welcome, even though not always in the same place. On Friday March 11th, the catering left the central station, and an urgent request for food was placed in the volunteer communication channels, we immediately resumed the operations and were able to deliver some 600 soups on that day, even though we started later.

The End

Daiane and I were quickly reaching our physical and psychological limits at that point. Cooking at our house took a huge toll on our daily routine, house chores, my work and mainly, on our son, who was missing our company and attention. We had the offer to move our operation to an industrial kitchen at a nearby church, from a Brazilian Priest who worked at a Portuguese-speaking catholic congregation. We moved the entire operation there in the following Monday (March 14th), and started cooking in this new location on Tuesday (March 15th). We had contacts of people who were still needing warm meals, but we were producing too much, and noticed that a big scale operation like ours was not ideal. There was much trouble to deliver the soups cooked on that day, and it was almost by a miracle that we hadn’t thrown a big batch of around 100 soups to the trash. Apparently all the refugee centers were organised enough so that they had enough food for everyone.

At the moment we still have the cooking operation in stand-by, with some non-perishable ingredients, materials and equipment in the local church, ready to resume if we see our cooking is welcome anywhere (even if not for Ukrainian refugees), but German bureaucracy is stopping us to make progress in that sense. This is not necessarily bad news, it means that the professionals took over and that the volunteers can take a break and go back to their regular lives.

News

We made it to the news in Brazil. Having such a large body of people ready to help, obviously some of them would have contacts in news outlets, and many of them were eager to talk about our little operation. It all helped to spread the word, gather more people to the cause, donatives, but our main objective by talking to these Brazilian news outlets was not to make our names seen, but to try and inspire others to do a similar thing, in whatever length possible. There are people in need in all parts of the world, and helping them doesn’t need to be hard, a simple lentil soup can go a long way in making somebody feel loved.

Recipee

For everyone here who got curious and would like to try out our recipee, it’s a vegan lentil soup, very filling, nutritious, full of protein and vitamins.

Yields 70 to 75 portions of 450ml

Ingredients

1 kg of diced onions
0,5 kg of diced bell peppers (mixed colours or only red)
2 kg of sliced potatoes (bitesized)
2 kg of sliced carrots (bitesized)
1 kg of pre-chopped canned tomatoes
4,5 kg of green lentils
Water to cover
Two generous tablespoons of dried thyme
Two generous tablespoons of powdered cumin
One tablespoon of powdered black pepper
Salt to season
Vegetable oil to sauté

Instructions

Sauté the onions and peppers on the vegetable oil for a few minutes, until soft but still moist
Mix up the canned tomatoes and Spices
Move to the big cooker
Toss in the potatoes and carrots, cover with water, wait to come to a boil
Add the lentils
Cook for one hour, add hot water when needed
Taste spices and salt, adjust to taste
Serve

Production Numbers

Date	Meals
2022-03-03	86
2022-03-04	415
2022-03-05	596
2022-03-06	411
2022-03-07	703
2022-03-08	675
2022-03-09	680
2022-03-10	645
2022-03-11	418
2022-03-15	260
2022-04-08	302
Total	5.191

Media Library

Accounting

Accounting (in Portuguese)

Future

With all of these able hands ready to work and help, it would be a shame to stop there. We’ll keep trying our best to continue the project, cooking for whomever is needing a warm meal in their bellies, being of Ukrainian origin, or from anywhere else in the world.

Update (April 2022)

There’s a center in Berlin called Moabit Hilft, hosting several families of Ukrainian refugees, and they told us that about 600 weekly portions of soup would be welcomed in there. So, we went back to cooking as of Friday, April 8th.

Legacy

We heard a couple of heartwarming stories throughout the days, like how our soup was very good and welcome, the refugees and even volunteers really liked it, and it would even be preferred compared to the professional catering. But a very simple but strong story from the very last delivery day stuck with most of us. Some of the incoming refugees had a proper mobile connection and were in touch with each other on the way to Berlin, through social media and Telegram groups. We were told that some of them would arrive to the Berlin Central Station asking for the Lentil soup from the Brazilians, which was apparently a big sensation.

We all hope that peace will come soon, and that all of these families can return safely home for their regular lives, which might include rebuilding, and it might be anything but regular for quite some time. But, in ten, twenty or even fifty years time, someone will remember about that warm lentil soup that was welcoming them when arriving at Berlin, and that gives me comfort that we were able to do our tiny little part in the whole effort for peace and relief.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank everybody who helped so far, by donating any amount of cash, time, materials, utensils, ingredients and spreading the word about this initiative. this wouldn’t be possible without each and every one of you.

Contributing

If you’re interested in joining us, please check here my wife’s Instagram post with all information about how to help. About contributing to this page, please open a Pull request here.