In 2002 Magnus was already involved in charity work
and he travelled to Malawi to see what the needs of the people there were and
how he could best help them. An Italian
priest with whom he was staying took him to see – among many other people – a mother
who was dying of Aids. Magnus asked her
older son Edward, who was fourteen, what he most hoped for from his life. The boy answered: ‘I would like to have
enough food to eat and I would like to be able to go to school.’
This meeting had a profound effect on
MacFarlane-Barrow. It clarified for him
the approach his charity work would take and how he could improve the situation
faced by the poorest people in the world.
He realised that millions of children are not in school and in many
cases these are children who don’t have enough to eat. When hungry children know that they would get
a meal in school they would be far more likely to attend and better able to
concentrate and learn. This is what
Magnus had learned from the fourteen year old Edward and from this meeting the
idea of Mary’s Meals blossomed. Magnus
had a great devotion to Our Lady. He had
been on pilgrimages to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje so he
dedicated his charity to her.
Today more than one thousand, three hundred schools
across the world supply dinners through Mary’s Meals. There are about the same number of schools in
Britain who support Mary’s Meals and have raised about £777,000 over the last
three years. But Mary’s Meals have many
supporters, among them many in our parish.
Tony Headon has raised our awareness of the great work Mary’s Meals does
and has enabled us to be part of it.
The charity’s annual turnover is around £15,000,000
with donors from all areas of British life.
It has particularly strong support in the Catholic community. It has supporter bases in America, Australia,
Austria, Germany, Croatia, Ireland, Italy and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since the start of this year a further
forty-five thousand children receive a meal every day at their school who
otherwise would be hungry – and not at school.
Mary’s Meals does not simply hand out food. It buys locally sourced food and so contributes
to the local economy. It provides the
food in a sustainable way respecting the development of the countries they
operate in. Whole generations of
children are receiving schooling and training enabling a new skilled and
educated population in developing countries to benefit their communities and
help to raise their countries out of poverty.
All of their projects are meant to lead to self-sufficiency. They do not encourage communities to remain
dependant on them. Self-sufficiency is
the goal set before each community they help.
The origins of Mary’s Meals go back to 1992 when
the Balkan conflict was raging. Magnus
MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother Fergus organised a local appeal for blankets
and food in their village of Dalmally in Argyll. They filled a Jeep and drove to
Medjugorje. They returned to Scotland to
resume their lives as fish-farmers but discovered that their parents’ shed was
again filled with donations so they set off once more. Magnus then twenty-five, decided to take a
year out to continue his aid work – but he has never gone back to his old
job. The project was registered as a
charity named Scottish International Relief (SIR). In 2002 when involved with aid work in Malawi,
the charity officially changed its name to Mary’s Meals. This was to reflect the fact that providing
school meals had now become the main focus of their work.
Mary’s Meals works closely with local communities
when establishing a meals project. They
seek to involve the local leaders, teachers, parents and churches in the
process. Usually land is donated in
order to build a kitchen near the school.
Teachers and parents organise a pool of volunteers who will take their
turn cooking and serving the meals.
Mary’s Meals provides the kitchen, cooking equipment, training, support
and regular supply of nutritious food.
Another aspect of the charity’s work is the
Back-pack Project. This encourages
school children to donate their old school backpacks. These can be placed in the special box in the
West Porch. Also you might place school
materials in the box – such as notebooks, pencils, flip-flops and T-shirts to
send to children in countries such as Liberia, Uganda and Malawi. Pound shops are good sources for ideas and
bargains. Thanks for all you do!
