Mary’s Meals is a program providing much-needed food aid to children in need all over the world. Magnus MacFarland-Barrow, the founder of Mary’s Meals, was a salmon farmer and history student in Scotland when he started orchestrating food donations and emergency relief for children in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992 conflict. After the war, MacFarland-Barrow decided to direct famine relief to Africa, and expanded the efforts of the organization that would come to be Mary’s Meals.
Mary’s Meals now provides relief to malnourished children in 16 developing countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and South America in the form of one school meal per day. MacFarland-Barrow observed that children who were hungry not only suffered physically, but that hunger caused them to suffer in school. By providing a healthy, nourishing meal each day during schools hours, Mary’s Meals gives children the nutrition they need and energy to concentrate in school. In addition to food, Mary’s Meals also supplies backpacks and classroom essentials like pencils, crayons, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and uniforms to schoolchildren.
In an effort to stimulate the economies of the countries they work in, Mary’s Meals purchases local produce from those countries to create the culturally-appropriate food they serve in schools, like maize from Malawi to create nutritious porridge dishes.
Through donations and their outstanding efforts, Mary’s Meals now feeds almost 550,000 children daily in Malawi alone. Learn more about their good work through Child 31, a documentary profiling their uplifting stories of beating childhood hunger.
