CAZENOVIA — Pewter Spoon Café in Cazenovia recently held its most successful weekend fundraiser to date, raising $1,585.71 to support the emergency food relief efforts of World Central Kitchen (WCK).
Located at 87 Albany St., Pewter Spoon is owned by Pat Carmeli and managed by her daughter Ava Carmeli.
Over the past several years, the business has held weekend-long fundraisers for multiple organizations, including Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, and Campaign Zero.
WCK is a not-for-profit non-governmental organization that provides fresh meals to communities around the world in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.
Founded in 2010 by chef José Andrés, the organization first prepared food in Haiti following its devastating earthquake.
“Right now, its efforts are focused especially on Gaza, where over one million people are eating half a meal every two days due to Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid trucks,” said Ava. “WCK has been able to set up large kitchens in different parts of the Gaza Strip in the last 130 days, and their incredibly hardworking staff makes 170,000 hot meals every single day.”
Last year, Carmeli hosted a foreign exchange student from Gaza named Medhat.
According to Ava, the student was recently able to evacuate to Egypt with his mother and two young sisters, but his father, who is a doctor, remains in Gaza treating the wounded, and several other members of his family were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
“This violence hits close to home, and we need the community’s help in supporting the people of Gaza,” Ava said.
Pewter Spoon committed to donating 15 percent of its sales from Friday, Feb. 23 through Sunday, Feb. 25, to WCK.
In addition to supporting the organization through purchases made at the café and through the Pewter Spoon website, people could also make personal contributions to WCK through a social media fundraiser and in-person donations.
“We [also had] postcards available for folks to send to [their] elected representatives demanding a ceasefire now and an end to the forced starvation of Palestinians living in Gaza,” said Ava. “[We] raised $1,585.71, so [we] are rounding it up and donating $1,600.”
To learn more about WCK, visit wck.org.
For more information on Pewter Spoon, visit pewter-spoon-cafe.square.site.
