Mary's Meals

About the charity

Overview of the charity

Mary’s Meals sets up school feeding projects in countries where hunger and poverty prevent children from getting an education. Daily meals are provided in school for over 413,000 children in 15 of the world’s poorest countries.

We aim to help children by providing a meal a day in school, encouraging them to gain the education that can lift them out of poverty. It’s a simple but effective idea that is gathering momentum all the time.

We know that school feeding works because we have seen the results. In almost every case, Mary’s Meals leads to improved attendance, enrolment and exam results.

Children tell us that that they can focus on learning when they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

Mary’s Meals works in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central America. Our projects are tailored to the needs of the countries we work in and rely on the contribution of volunteers who prepare meals - one of the reasons that we are able to keep costs low. 

At least 93p from every pound donated to Mary’s Meals is spent directly on our projects.

How we operate

In Malawi, and also in Liberia, Uganda, Kenya and Haiti, we provide a meal a day, in most cases for every child in the school.

The meals are local dishes, packed with nutrition and made from local resources wherever possible. In Malawi the meal takes the form of a maize porridge called likuni phala, in Haiti it is based on rice and stew.

In some countries, where poverty is widespread, we would feed every child in a school, in others, where poverty is more localised, our work is localised too.

For example, in India, we provide meals and lessons for working children in non formal education centres. In Ukraine, we support a night bus that delivers food and schooling to homeless young people.

How we started

Mary’s Meals is part of Scottish International Relief, a charity started in 1992 during the Bosnian conflict when two brothers, Magnus and Fergus MacFarlane-Barrow, organised a local appeal for blankets and food and delivered a jeep load of aid to Bosnia.

The brothers had intended the trip to be a one off, but when they returned, they found that their parents’ garage had been filled with donations. Magnus decided to carry on delivering aid as long as people kept donating – and they have never stopped.  A registered charity was started and Scottish International Relief began to work in a number of countries.

Mary’s Meals evolved on a visit to Malawi in 2002 when Magnus met a family, living in a traditional hut, whose mother, Emma, was dying from AIDS. He asked her eldest son what he wanted from life, and he replied: “to have enough to eat and go to school one day.” 

Mary’s Meals has grown as a response to that simple request.

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