 Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. My name is Bill Burns. I'm the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It is truly my pleasure to welcome you all to this year's Mort and Shepi Abramowitz lecture, and it is a special pleasure to introduce our distinguished guest, Chef Jose Andres. This event, as many of you know, honors two remarkable human beings who have made an enormous mark not only on this institution, but on humanitarian policy field. Mort, as you all know, became President of Carnegie after an extraordinary diplomatic career, launched its first global center and helped seed and grow a number of hugely important institutions dedicated to the cause of international peace. Shepi has dedicated her life to fierce advocacy on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers from Kosovo to Cambodia. Together they've inspired and mentored generations of humanitarians. So I'm deeply grateful to the Abramowitz family for supporting this event series, and I'm equally grateful for the opportunity to celebrate their legacy and sustain their contribution to a set of policy challenges that deserve far more attention than they get in a town consumed by attention deficit disorder. As all of you know, the supply demand gap for humanitarian assistance is growing by the day. We're in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in 70 years. Climate change is leading to more frequent and more severe natural disasters, exacerbating food shortages and fueling conflict. We're only beginning to see the potential humanitarian impact of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, we have on hand barely half of the funding we need to respond to the humanitarian crises before us and massive transformations on the international landscape are imperiling the international cooperation that we need. Even as we work to learn from the past and improve the effectiveness of aid delivery and humanitarian response, we're confronted with new challenges, new technologies and new players and an even more uncertain future. I cannot think of anyone better place to help us think through these issues, nor can I think of anyone who better embodies the Abramowitz's passion, compassion and commitment to shaking things up than Jose Andres. Chef Jose needs little introduction. If you haven't eaten at his 30 award winning restaurants around the world, read his bestselling books or followed the work of his remarkable humanitarian organization, World Central Kitchen, then you've been living under a rock. President Obama, who awarded Jose the National Humanities Medal, said Jose's was the quintessential American success story and exhibit a forgiving immigrants and opportunity. True words have never been spoken. Not all heroes these days wear capes. Some clearly wear aprons. Last year, World Central Kitchen responded to 13 natural and manmade disasters worldwide and served over 600,000 meals in the United States. In 2017, World Central Kitchen served 3.6 million meals in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. And in our own town, Jose's Kitchen served over 100,000 meals to furloughed federal workers during last year's government shutdown. It is only appropriate that we honor a humanitarian trailblazer at this year's Abramowitz lecture. Indeed, Jose reminds me of a close friend and colleague of Mort and Shepi, Fred Cooney. Known as the master of disaster for revolutionizing disaster relief. Fred disappeared in 1995 while at a humanitarian mission in Chetsnye. I was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow at that time and spent many months managing the effort to find him to no avail. Like Fred, Jose is another non-traditional entrant into the humanitarian sector, willing to challenge conventional approaches to aid delivery, to go where others can't or won't, and committed to restoring hope and humanity amid disaster and desperation. And like Fred, his giant personality has infected everyone who has had the good fortune to be in his company. Moderating tonight's conversation as someone whose voice has been a constant in our homes and in our cars for many years. Nareed Eisenman has reported extensively for national public radio and the Washington Post on global health and development challenges, from the Zika virus in Columbia to Hurricane Harvey in Texas to immigration from the Northern Triangle. For her frontline coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in Liberia, she was awarded the Peabody Award for broadcast journalism. I bet Jose and Nareed had trade hours of stories from disaster zones of one kind or another and were extremely fortunate to be able to learn from their experience and their expertise. So thanks again for coming and please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Jose Andres and Nareed Eisenman. So congratulations on all this work and I wanted to start with a question that I hope does not sound rude because I don't mean it that way, but which is should you be here? Why are you here? And by that what I mean is the work that you've been doing is providing really essential services to people in great need and isn't that work that governments should be doing or at least international organizations funded by governments and is the fact that your organization has been doing a lot of it. Is that an indication that governments are falling down and that they need to be stepping up or is there something about what you're doing that is beyond what governments are capable of? All right, like for questions in one, obviously you've been in Washington a long time. And I don't think it's right. You're right. I mean, my daughter, Carlota, who is an NYU now and my other daughter, who is at Georgetown, they told me, Daddy, they invite you to Carnegie to speak. Are you sure? Like when they invite me first time to give the commencement speech at your Washington in the mall, almost 50,000 people. And when I told them at home, man, they invite me to give the commencement speech. My first commencement speech and my second daughter, Ines, told me, Daddy, are you sure they invite you to speak or to cook for the graduates? Maybe both. Listen, I don't take these invitations lightly and they have a big meaning because more and more we are realizing that everybody should be invited to the table and participating of the many issues we face. What is very obvious to me is that if we are talking about feeding, shouldn't you be inviting the cooks in the room to talk about feeding? And we've been doing it wrong because people that have nothing to do with the cooking business, they've been in charge of feeding. And that's something that we should change because it's a very simple thing to change. Why? Because my profession is willing and able and engaged to be part of the conversation about how are we feeding the world in emergencies or beyond emergencies. So they always told me that if they don't invite you to the table, you should invite yourself to the table, even if it may sound rude. And that's what we do. If they don't open us the door, we knock on the door. If they don't open the door, we jump through the window. And to the grid, that's what I've been doing all my life. So is your argument that the chefs, people who are in cooking, they have a role to play, even if governments are fulfilling all their responsibilities, there's still a role for people who know how to cook. Well, I do believe that we need government and we need good structures. I think it's always a conversation between big government versus small government, Republicans versus Democrats. May I always say that both conversations are the wrong conversations. We need to have the right government. And that requires adapting to different moments at different situations and being quick on the decisions that allow us to succeed. I do believe in this 2020, we need disruption in the way we are providing relief and aid in America and around the world. I think in the same way we've seen disruption on the internet, on so many different companies that keep popping up from Silicon Valley and other places, that they are disruptors in different segments. I do believe that relief, NGOs, government, the way they've been providing relief, it's ready for disruption and disruption in a good way. Pushing the boundaries of whatever we are not doing right. Being a voice of the things that we need to change and bringing new ideas where we can be bringing relief to people in America and beyond. Quicker, faster, better, if possible, cheaper, because I do believe we are wasting time and money that can be put for better service. If anything, to bring faster relief, quicker relief to more people. An organization like the one we created after Haiti, World Central Kitchen, almost everything happened by mistake. Obviously, I didn't call it World Central Kitchen for nothing. I dream that one day we could be in many places. I never imagined that we would be in so many places so fast and so quick. That we'd be in places like Australia on the fires, was some big after the typhoon. In Japan right now, feeding the Americans in the carnival cruise ship, because nobody else was able already to feed people in such an emergency situation with the coronavirus. We've been in every fire in America, earthquake, hurricane. And we keep showing up because while there are, they all established my organizations that they do a okay job. I do believe sometimes we forget about people. We forget about the elderly. We forget about the poor. We forget about the minority communities that everybody forgets about. And they sit alone far away from where everything happened, where they have no food, no water and nobody bringing them relief. And that's what World Central Kitchen brings. We don't wait for anybody to call us. We show up before they call us and we look for our guests. Who are our guests? The people that are hungry and the people that are thirsty. What our plan is, we have no plan. Boots on the ground. All our teams now do whatever it takes to bring food and water to everybody that is in need. In the process of having boots on the ground, we create the plan. In Bahamas, we were the first on the ground. We reached 14 islands in less than five days. We reached almost 70,000 meals a day in less than eight days. And we created the system of relief before any of the very big organizations even were ready to move. So we are here to tell them we want to help you be quicker and faster. We also need you, but we need to understand that things have to change. Things in the past have not been done quick and fast and well enough. I think it's a time for disruption and organizations like World Central Kitchen I think are bringing these fresh boys and how we should be providing relief. Can you elaborate more on some of the specific insights that you've gained through this work that would be applicable to other organizations in terms of the kind of disruption you're talking about? One of the things you mentioned was thinking about people that you might not be thinking about to serve. But you've also talked about, for example, this insight that sometimes the issue is not availability of food per se, but ability to cook it, or just talk about some of the different kinds of insights that you've had in different places of that kind. It's a lot of examples. For example, Bahamas was total destruction. We're talking close to 15% of the population lost their homes or their homes were badly damaged. It's not a big number, right? It's 80,000 people. But Bahamas is a country of 450,000 people. We're talking close to 15% of the entire population were affected. So for that government, it was a major event. When we reached the Northern Islands, one hour by helicopter away from Nassau, 45, 50 minutes to Freeport from Fort Laudero, that was the two ways we came. One of the main problems was no electricity, no fuel, no cell signal. Without electricity, gas stations don't work. Without gas stations, you don't have gas to have cars that allow you to move. Some block was one of my favorite leaders in our organization had a big quick solution for that. Every single boat was in the middle of the road. Every boat had diesel inside their boat. He got a tube. Within days, we had almost 34 cars use out our disposal. While everybody else was trying to bring fuel to the island, some had fuel for all of us thinking out of the box. Those are things that sometimes allow us to move so quickly. Other things that allow us to move so quickly, we are not about hardware. We are about software. Hardware means that you have things that you want to bring with you. Things that you need to deliver aid. We believe that if we wait for things that are material, it slows our response. So we come with software, which is in our brains. We're able to come and adapt to wherever things we have in the places we are trying to bring relief, allowing us to be more efficient than anybody else. Not like we don't enjoy Harvard. We have food trucks at our disposal now. We have field kitchens that sometimes we bring with us. We have water filtration systems that allow us to bring water in places that is known. But our teams are trained to don't wait for the hardware, for the assets. They're trained to start maximizing whatever we find. That's what allow us also to move faster and quicker. We may be hiring, I will not say hiring because they are volunteers above all, but they need to be paid because a lot of people are young. But we will activate food trucks. In a place that is nothing, we may have 10 or 20 food trucks working with us where immediately we put in a strategic area as well, feeding shelters or feeding communities. It's thousands of food trucks in America. It's hundreds of thousands of food trucks in the world. Everywhere we go, more often than not, we end using food trucks as one of our first responses on the field hours before, by the time we get there. We have field kitchens that we do in the middle of anywhere. Marsh Harbor, we did a field kitchen. But then we will hire or rent or they will give us hotel kitchens, catering kitchens, restaurant kitchens that we will use and strategically we will use to feed people. Emperor Rico, we did almost 4 million meals. First day, one kitchen. We went from one kitchen to 26 kitchens across the island. First day we were 20 friends. We had been 25,000 men and women army. We went from 1000 meals a day to almost 150,000 meals a day. You see, that's what we are very resourceful. And more important, last, we don't really have a plan. Let me tell you why. When you plan and you have this big binder with all the plan that, oh, how to get gas at pace 27, you go. And when you have a plan, you put your teams probably not for success, but for failure. Because more often than not, things will never happen as you plan them. Then what you are doing is training your teams for failure. What we train our teams is to adaptation. Adapt to the circumstances on the ground. Adapt with what you have around you. And make the most out of the things you have at your disposal. If we plan too much, we put our teams in a failure course. Because never anything goes to plan in emergencies. Train them to be adaptable and you'll be most of the time successful. I think it was Winston Churchill said that success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Our teams have enthusiasm and empathy. And those two things combined makes them very much unstoppable. We can fit anybody, anywhere, anytime. Another asset that you have is what I've realized reading about the work that you do is this incredible network of chefs. It's almost like, sort of emergency hotline, chefs around the world, restaurants around the world. This is kind of pre-existing network. How much have you drawn on that? So 10% of the American workforce is in the food business. We're restaurants, food companies, chefs, methodies, bakers, farmers. One of my biggest failures was never showing up in Katrina. I wish it was there. I thought about it, but I didn't do it. Why not? Because I didn't. I had other things and I don't know why I didn't go to that one. You had already done something. But I wish I could go back in time. Yeah. Well, Central Kitchen still was very small and obviously very involved in the city with DC Central Kitchen, but I didn't go Katrina. You remember what happened at the Superdome? Thousands of Americans in the Superdome, a big arena, for days without water, for days without food, things happen to women, security, health was the worst response we could do as a country. But think for a second what an arena is. Every one of the things is used as sports venue, a music venue. No. It's a gigantic restaurant that entertains with sports. If we show up there and we activate all the restaurants or the food courts places that feed the people when they go to watch their concert or their game and we bring some cooks like me in less than two hours we are feeding everybody. That's why for us arenas are very important, schools are very important because they are part, they are our Trojan horse in the communities. So we are always trying to think out of the box in that sense. So we believe that every restaurant out there is used an asset of ours. Every food truck is an asset of ours. Puerto Rico, in the earthquake we reached already close to 450,000 meals in this last earthquake, mainly led by women because we have an amazing talented team that happens to our woman and they're the best, let me tell you. Within six hours of the earthquake we were feeding 10,000 people a day. Within 48 hours we were doing 20,000 meals a day. The official shelters were five or six, six shelters, official shelters. We were delivering food to more than 150 places around the earthquake zone. Official six, we were doing the six but then we were doing 144 other places with elderly people that couldn't drive, with poor people that didn't have money for a car or gas, reaching the community. So that's what I'm telling you. We believe we are everywhere. In Albania, after the earthquake, one of the best chefs in Albania opened his kitchen and he printed the logo of Wall Central Kitchen and he put it in front of his restaurant. And they coordinate our leader at Wall Central Kitchen, the CEO, the heart of Wall Central Kitchen and a good friend. And they say, are we there already? Because this just happened six hours ago. I don't know. So we contacted him, obviously we helped him, financial support, we sent a team. But this is almost the spirit of what we created. But now we need to control it because anybody wants to join our spirit, they're activated on their own and they provide relief on their own. As an organization, nothing makes me happier. So yes, we are a big force. We've weaponized empathy. We've weaponized goodness. And a plate of food very quickly sometimes is the beginning of a better tomorrow. This is the kind of things are happening. Technically, we're everywhere. Even people don't know yet we are. A huge amount of the work that you do is providing food to people who, but for that food would go hungry that day at least possibly longer term. But some of the projects that you've done don't seem to be for people who would literally starve if you didn't get them the food coming to mind for me or the food for furlough government employees during the shutdown. Even the Diamond Princess, arguably, I don't know whether they would have starved without that food. Are some of the choices that you make, you have a high profile? Are you making some of those choices, not just about provision of food, but also to make a statement to draw attention to something? Yes, yes, and yes. Ambassador referred to what we did in DC. I think we did far away more than 100,000 meals because I don't know if you saw the image on the New York Times, which actually, with all due respect, I don't know why the Washington Post was not the one that did it, but there is still my favorite newspaper in the world. But I was this photo with all these federal employees in a very long line waiting for a plate of food at Wall Central Kitchen. Let me tell you what I began that many years ago in my restaurants. This began in my restaurants as a way to support federal employees, which actually, they are the batter of my business more often than not because I've been supported by them for 25 years. But I realized in one of the first federal shutdowns few years ago that there's many people that suffer actually, and that actually is more problematic than we think. Is woman single mothers with two, three children, that they had the hard decision of what do I, why, why you get rid of food, childcare, the medicines, the rent. So mainly I did it because I realized it was women that were actually suffering. And if you don't offer those services, even if some people may not need it, you are probably not taking care of people that actually are in need of you to take care of them and help them at least with food. So I began doing it in the restaurants. When this one happened, and I saw what's going on long term, we didn't only activate one restaurant. We activated close to 575 restaurants across 35 states. That's what Walshandra Kitchen do. It's not only what we do. It's what we all together, we, the people do. And to me to see that all my friends in the restaurant industry join, providing a free meal every lunch to every federal employee from Ogden, Utah, all the way to anywhere you name it, that was what I was happy to see. So there, yes, we were sending a message why the federal government is shutting down the government. If we shut down the government, we should have new elections. There's no way that you decide to shut down the government because congressmen and senators cannot get along in how to run this country. So we announced that because it was people that were going to go hungry because our politicians couldn't come together on a simple decision. Obviously, we are right now in Venezuela. We're in Matamoros. We're in Tijuana. I never imagined the political environment was going to be detailing directly our participation. What do we do it? Because it's the right thing to do. Right now in Venezuela is children that they are malnourished. Venezuela is about to lose entire generation of children. Because many of those children are right on severe malnutrition. And if it's any children we can feed that we can give them opportunity to things get better in Venezuela. So give them hope. I do believe it's the right thing to do. The right thing to do as a human is the right thing to do as an American. Investing in the betterment of the lives of the countries and the peoples running America is the best investment we can all do on national security. Shouldn't be a democratic or republican point of view. Should be used an American foreign affairs point of view. Any country that does well around us is only going to make America better, stronger and safer. And if a plate of food can be the beginning of a better tomorrow, I'm very happy that we are doing there our little part. So I want to open it up to questions from the audience. A lot of hands are already going up. This woman over here with the maroon. Yes, my name is Liliana Rodriguez. I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm a national defense expert. My question is it's amazing what you're doing sir. But I don't understand your logistics. I mean, for example, when there is a place you send planes with food and people or you have kind of team in each region. And especially concerning Venezuela. They allow you to stay there. Thanks. I'm very happy you say you don't understand it because sometimes I don't understand it. Let me give you example. Number one, the men and women of FEMA are amazing people. The men and women of USAID are amazing people. And actually we need a better function in FEMA. A smaller we need to divide emergency and reconstruction. We need, if anything, a better event USAID. But even the people working within FEMA and USAID, they will tell you, yes, my private business, they need to improve every day. We are all in the business of trying to be better to take care of the problems of today. But I was in FEMA. I was in Puerto Rico. And I was in the room where the people that were in charge of feeding Puerto Rico were talking. And that night I cried. And the day after I cried. They were talking about bringing bread from Florida. It's like four or five bakeries in Puerto Rico, big bakeries. The only thing they needed was a working generator. The only thing they needed was some fuel to make sure the generator function. They had flour, they had water. What we helped provide to them and we got bread the day after was making sure that they got the generator functioning. Pan Pepin is one of those people. I forgot the name of the owner. After they got the generator functioning and they got the fuel functioning, we didn't have to wait for bread that will take weeks to come from far away. We had bread the day after. Thanks to that bread, we were able to start making sandwiches. No hundreds, thousands a day. Thanks to those sandwiches, the bread, we can start delivering sandwiches and fruit and getting it to the people. So the system is very simple. We go to a place, we see what's going on, and we adapt to the situation. We may activate food trucks, we may activate catering kitchens, we may activate and we start cooking. It's always food. Hold on. If now you are going to the heart of, I don't know, I don't want to use the Africa because it will be the first country that will think it's some places that they have hard time reaching food. But usually it's always food everywhere. And cooks like me, we, guess what? I always know where food is. I always know where water is. Guess what? I know where kitchens are. I know the people around those kitchens. And once we start cooking, everything is easy. We look for the people in need. And everything happens simultaneously. So I recommend you to read my book. So I don't, I don't mind to tell you to buy it because 100% of the proceeds really go towards and I'll get you. So it's a commercial. But there they will, you will see how simple our, I feel very guilty because some people sometimes praise me or praise our organization. Guys, you are so good. You're so smart. And me, I look myself at the mirror. I'm like, well, no, really. The only thing we do is this. We show up. We find the helpers. We find the food. We find the kitchen. We start cooking and we start delivering. That's all we do. But are we good on creating maps? Are we good using GPS's and start doing coordinates and start doing a plan and start creating a highway of relief? We're not only we bring food and water, but we start bringing medicines because these organizations that they need the system we created used to reach people in the mountains or faraway places that nobody shows up. Do we bring, you know many people that died Puerto Rico? Elderly. No electricity. Breathing machines. I know because my mom wasn't one. Without functioning breathing machines, people got in trouble. Was thousands of generators in Puerto Rico and other places that they would go. You know what happens? If you have assets, but you don't deliver them, they equal nothing. People died because people kept those generators. I don't know why. And instead of delivering them, they were waiting for a better tomorrow. And people died because they didn't have the humble generator worth $500 that only needed a little bit of fuel to run so could save the life of people in need of one. Sometimes the very big problems, they have very simple solutions. In our case, we don't plan with a meat. We start cooking and we start delivering. In the process, the plan is created. Before we know, we reach thousands of people. This gentleman over here. My question is on nutrition. Is the nutritional quality of the food, how do you deal with that and how do you build in? You mentioned bread, but how do you make sure there's protein and so forth? Yeah, I only put your example on the bread because that was probably close to 80% of our meals, our hot meals. I invite you to go to the Twitter of Walsa and Dragitian and you'll see the menu that we do in every single mission we are right now becomes very competitive. In the early days, we do whatever we can get our hands on. But I can guarantee you, we have a nutritionist on board that, believe me, fills our ears with what we do and what we don't do. But in emergencies, you do what you have. So I would say we have universities and different people that are kind of joining us, doing the studies of the nutritional values of what we bring. We're going to do a cookbook because it's the most requesting in our Twitter account because we cook. You know in Bahamas, I was very proud because we have a school in Haiti and we graduate 100 young women a year that then they find jobs in the community, in the restaurant or tourism industry. We brought some of the teachers to Bahamas because in Bahamas was thousands of Haitians that were displaced. So for them, we were cooking Haitian food in Bahamas. That's the type of NGO kind of we are. Very much everywhere we go, we end up always cooking dishes that there are local dishes. Fire engine in Bahamas that if you don't know what it is, I'm not going to tell you, you're going to go. But it's going to become very popular one day. And every Bahamian gives you a smile when you bring them fire engine to their shelter or their homes. But let me tell you what's more important than even the nutritional value. Because we bring nutrition, we bring calories. At the beginning is what you need in the early days. Why we are against emmeries? Or why we don't believe emmeries are the solution? They're meals ready to eat. Meals ready to eat, military. Number one, they are super expensive. They can cost $7,000, $8,000, $9,000, $11 each pack. Number two, they occupy a lot of space. In the space of four emmeries, maybe six, we can almost deliver 40 meals in the same space. So it's not very good when you have to do big quantities of people. Because the volume of space you need is used impossible to handle, especially if you may need helicopters or other ways, their weight. But more important, with emmeries is the parachute mentality. Somebody shows up, brings these crates of emmeries, drops them in the middle of the square. Sometimes they don't even contact the local leaders or authorities. They don't even know how many meals are in that crate. They don't even bother to know how many people are in that town in need of food. And what is worse? They do check, emmeries delivered, and they never come back. We come back every day. Because fresh food can only be eaten every day. Because it's not refrigeration and places to keep it. So we come back tomorrow and the day after. And this is our promise with the people. We will keep coming back until you tell us you don't need us anymore. In Bahamas, we were the first ones to land with permission of US Coast Guard that they were the first ones to land to start rescuing in Treasure Island and Marsh Harbor. But we were the first ones to land, the first one we're having people. And still today, we are doing close to 10,000, 12,000 meals a day, all in northern Bahamas. Usually, in these missions, we are the first ones to land, the last ones to leave. And we try to bring fresh food to everybody every day. Fresh food every day, salad every day, good protein, good carbohydrates every day. In the early days, we do whatever we can. But even in the early days, every day, we do better and better. So I'm very, very proud of the team. You see our photos, and you're going to see green and red and yellow. The colors of our meals, believe me, they are. They look good, but they even taste better than they look. Why? Because I have some of the best chefs joining us. And they put their know-how at the service of the people. And that's what we do. In the back there, I think it's Steve. Jose, thank you very much. I'm Steve Clemens. I'm editor-at-large at The Hill. The other night, I saw you at the State of the Union Address, and some of us there thought that you should win the Presidential Medal of Freedom instead of Rush Limbaugh, and tweeted that. My question is, every time you succeed in one of these mass-need events, in a way, you're shaming a government that couldn't do it or you're shaming ideologues that were resistant. And I'm interested in what happens after you're there. Do governments try and learn? Do stakeholders, after we try and learn? Or are you the necessary piece every time? Because part of the question is, is what you're doing replicable to others? Thank you. So number one, you see I'm a little bit passionate about these issues, so I apologize for that. But we don't do what we do to shame anybody. I have plenty, and you know, but I have plenty of friends in public service, plenty of friends in the State Department, and all of those individuals are unbelievable individuals. Yeah, but what I don't mind to shame is the system. OK, so I want to be very clear when I talk about the organization versus the people in the organization. Not like some leaders shouldn't be ashamed, and they know who they are. But even them are ashamed themselves because they have their hands handcuffed. And what I always tell them is, so speak up. Fire yourself. But don't keep being part of the problem. And this is good people. Red tape, we always listen about red tape. What we do, we don't want red tape. Anytime anybody comes to us and tells us, oh, but yeah, we want to partner with you, but you need to do this and this and that. Say, whoa, time out. Thank you. Use find somebody else. We don't want to be part of you because then you become them. So to this day, I regret that maybe because my criticisms in Puerto Rico on FEMA is still I've not been able to get a meeting with anybody at FEMA. I mean, I don't want to talk to the secretary. I use anybody. Do we have a lot of friends in FEMA? Yes. I've been successful in getting high-end meetings in FEMA? No. Do I think I would like to? Yeah. I will be bitchy? Yeah. But because I only want their best. And it's not like now I have an answer to everything. But yes, I can give examples in real time of failures in Puerto Rico alone, but this has happened in many other places around in America or around the world. We had many places full of water when people were thirsty. And I had people that the only thing we're doing is use filling up arenas of water. For what? Oh, because we want to have a lot of water. But why do you want to have a lot of water? Yeah, because we need water to give to the people. And we want to make sure we have a lot of water. I'm like, shit, but the people are thirsty now. Why are you filling up the arena with water? Why you don't deliver the food? My kitchens are empty every day because as food comes in, food goes out. Why are you going to keep the food? Oh, look at how much food I have, man. I'm so cool. Look at it. I got more food than you. Really? So me, I cannot believe that that happened in Puerto Rico and that we had water to give away, to bring relief to people. But somebody was not thinking that that water was supposed to be sent. We knew about that. We will request to be given that water so we could distribute it. Because I couldn't get water on my own. Even with money, we couldn't get it. And they will say no. And I cry. I cry of being powerless. And I began saying, I'm going to speak truth to power when I think we're doing things wrong that are leaving American citizens in pain or citizens of the world in pain. Because that's our role. That's my role as a citizen. But then as an organization, World Central Kitchen, we're trying to do with our simplicity, simple approach to emergencies. Trying to tell other people that the big problems, they have very simple solutions. And that we should meet less and have more action on the ground. And that's very much what it is. So I'm trying not to shame anybody because I don't gain anything. What I'm trying is only to be heard. And that's why I'm so proud that you guys came by me here today to, in a humble possible way, but with a very action kind of mind, say, how can we do tomorrow better than what we did today? If we can move the needle a little bit, I'm not happy enough. But at least it goes in the right direction. How much are you evolving towards addressing these systemic issues, not just the systems you've described, but also the longer term root causes of some of the hunger that you're addressing, including emergencies. A lot of emergencies are on some level foreseeable. And I know you're not advocating planning when it comes to how you deal with the emergency. But there is some planning to be prepared in a broader sense. Are you evolving towards that? How? Well, right now we are more specializing. I think we live in the limbo of emergency, because wasn't Raghishan was created on Haiti. And I, right there, a few weeks after, and I began feeling in some of the camps, I think we were born in this limbo between emergency and reconstruction. One thing is pure emergency. But then if we are there for the long term, how do we do that in a sustainable way? And this becomes a little bit more complex in more ways than one. We can address that in America. In America, we have a food emergency. It's been going on forever. It's been going on since World War II and before. And today, we have a food emergency. Today, we have Americans that have a hard time putting food on the table. And we have the biggest farm building in the history of humanity. And America is the farm of the world. We produce a lot of food. And obviously, food waste, that is a very big issue. Everybody talks about food waste. And we barely talk about wasting people. Actually, we are not wasting food. We are wasting humans. And we should be in the business of making sure that no human life is ever wasted. So how we can have such a big farm bill that actually is not put at the service of ending the hunger issues that we face in America? I do believe we are not using every penny of the farm bill to end hunger in America. And in part, it's because it's not a political will on the Democratic side and on the Republican side, where corporations benefit enormously from that farm bill, where that farm bill should be something like every single hungry citizen benefits from. And why is that? Because if you see the way the farm bill is created, I don't have any problem with Coca-Cola. I like Coca-Cola. I make the best Roman Coke in the world. But that farm bill should be going to help small farmers in America, not the big farming corporations that they already are doing very well on their own. Every single small farmer in America should have a chance to benefit from the farm bill. Right now, they cannot. The very big five grains are subsidized directly through our government. Big corporations like McDonald's benefit from that subsidy. Why they can put a burger at 99 cents on the menu? You don't think I'm a business guy. I don't want to put a burger at 99 cents on the menu, too? I can't. It's impossible. I'm telling you, the numbers don't work. Why they can't? Because they benefit from those subsidies that I don't. Why we subsidize corn from the farm bill that actually is corn that then we use to make energy to run our cars? But why we don't subsidize broccoli or cauliflower or carrots? Why the small farmers of America that are at the heart of feeding America are not benefiting in the same way from the farm bill than the big corporations can? When you answer that, you start seeing many of the problems that we are facing. If I was president of the United States, my first thing will be making the farm bill at the service of every American. In the process, we will be end feeding the world, too. Haiti. America should be proud. We did a great job in Haiti. I'm sure there was plenty of things could be done better. But America responded to the earthquake in Haiti very well. Let me tell you where we didn't do well. We began dropping rice for free, because people were in need of food. We dropped so much rice for free that all the rice farmers' North Opera Prince went out of business. The damage we did by bringing so much cheap rice because we are subsidizing the rice farmers in America. And I understand if America is the one providing an aid, we should be providing aid with products that come from America. That's the theory. But if in the process, you put thousands of farmers out of business in Haiti that then they have no job, and then you create a bigger problem that the problem you were trying to fix, the normal thing is that next day, those farmers that have nothing to do in Haiti anymore, they will yam on a boat and they will try to come to Florida. So actually, you are creating a bigger problem in the process of trying to solve a problem. So we don't want people arriving in Florida in boats because it's not the smart for anybody. We put people in danger. The smarter thing was maybe to be buying the rice from the local farmers, to put America dollars cheaper, empowering the local Haitians, letting Haiti feed themselves, moving America out of Haiti quicker because already they are taking care of themselves and then not having any homeland security because people are arriving by boats to the shores of Florida. You see, it's the issue we cannot address right now, but obviously we are throwing too much money at the problem and sometimes we are not investing in the smart solution. It's just to end. This has to do with charity because at the end in charity, but charity, we are not doing it right. We should do charity the same way we do our private investments and our private businesses. Robert Egger, a friend of mine, my mentor, the founder of this Central Kitchen, one of the best visionaries in how to solve hunger issues in America, he told me that charity seems is always about the redemption of the giver. When charity should be about the liberation of the receiver, we give too much to feel good about ourselves. As a country, as citizens, we don't do enough to make sure that when we give, we liberate people from their problems. If we don't start liberating people when we give eight, we'll redeem ourselves and we'll feel good about what we do. But we will not solve the problems that we face in America and around the world. And I believe a smart, farm-built policy is the future of a stronger America, of a better America, healthier America, and in the process, making the country surrounding us richer too, everybody wins. We don't need walls no more because farming is solving all the problems that we face. I think that's a good note to end, and we're close to an end, but I do wanna get in one food question because you are also a renowned chef, so. Do you agree with anything I'm saying? We go, no, no, you don't need to clap. But you are a very, wow. It's Washington. I don't know who I'm speaking to. I mean, this is a lot of enthusiasm in Washington. I'm worried, I don't know who I'm talking to. So my food question is, you mentioned, you've been to all these places, and I'm sure you're very busy while you're doing the relief work, but you're also attuned to the flavors. Is there anything that's made it into one of your menus as a result of discovery? Fire engine. All right, tell it, what's in it? I'm gonna make a dish. I'm gonna make the dish. I brought a search Ibaka from the Toronto. He's from Congo, but he's a Spanish. He plays in the Spanish National Basketball Team. I mean, shit, I love it when he joined the team, I love it. I mean, you cannot be one of the best basketball teams if you don't have, in this case, an African-American player. They're the ones that play basketball well. And when he joined the team, I was like, shit, yes. He's the nicest guy, so he came to Bahamas, he came to volunteer with us in our kitchen, and he did an entire show on, and I served him. I cooked for him fancy dishes, and then I told her, I forgot her name, but one of our local chefs in a restaurant, I have in Bahamas, and we made fire engine. At the end, he had four plates of the fire engine, and he barely touched my dish. I'm like, really? All right, what is in fire engine? Fire engine does an homage to the fire engine, which is red and white. The white is for rice, and the red is this mix of corned beef with a lot of vegetables, whatever vegetables they can find. And the corned beef is very red. So they serve the red with the white, and that's the fire engine. I thought that is because it's a dish they can do very quickly, and everyone telling the story, yeah, this is a dish that they do very quickly because the firemen, they need to be ready to go to stop the fire, and they were looking at me, I'm like, no, man, what are you talking about? This has nothing to do with quick. This has everything to do with the color of the dish, but that's one of the dishes that really, I love when I do. So coming soon to a menu near us, your twist on it. Very soon to a menu around us. But I'm not gonna lie to you that I come back, I don't go to every trip, I have wife, I have children, I have my own 30 plus restaurants, I have a little restaurant group, we are now more than 2,000 people. But when it's big enough, I go. I love to join the teams and keep learning. I think this has been a very big learning for us. We believe we are still learning. In Japan, we were learning and the way the teams reacted to feed that cruise ship. We didn't go because we weren't gonna be in the news. We went because we didn't see the governments taking care of that issue efficiently enough. You cannot feed people that may be in a quarantine with a virus, with the same cooks that may have the virus themselves. It's not logical. So we are only, we're not the smartest. We are only trying to be logical and pragmatic in the action and in the reaction. And that's very much we do. Used to probably because we were ending before they kicked me out. But I don't quote French people publicly often, mainly because I'm a cook and cooks from France and Spain, we've always had this, right? But was this guy, Brillette Sabaran, one of the first food philosophers, 1826, who said, tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are. But this same guy had a very powerful phrase in the same book, almost like if there were food commandments that said the future of the nations will depend in how they feed themselves. More than ever, I do believe that bringing food. Thank you for bringing it to Carnegie. But food talk to the highest spheres of government is a must. Food is the DNA of who we are. Food is the first thing we do from the moment we born almost to the moment we go to a better life next to breathing. Food is our history, food is science, food is nutrition, food is national security, food is immigration. Food touches exactly every single thing. So we need to be bringing smart food conversation to everywhere. That's why I created this class at George Washington University, which has been in his seventh, eighth year where we precisely do that. We put food in the middle and we show how it touches every single thing. We have to all believe that food can be not the problem that we are facing around the world because overusing water and fertilizers and hunger, but actually food is the solution. Food is the solution if the leaders of the world today understand it and know how to transform food from a problem to an opportunity. All right, thank you so much. Well, that was cool game.