Scottish Catholic Observer

At last, together, we have reached that long-anticipated milestone! [Now], more than one million children—1,035,637 to be exact—will eat one of our meals in a place of education, a miracle which you have helped make happen. I dearly wish you could have been with us last week in Chirimba, a small Malawian village nestled at the foot of craggy mountains, where—until recently—children were going hungry.

The local school there is one of many in Malawi’s Machinga district that have received Mary’s Meals in the most recent expansion of our school feeding programme—an expansion which saw us surpass the million threshold and which, as always, was only possible because of the continuing generosity and ‘little acts of love’ of our supporters all around the world.

We went to Chirimba to rejoice and give thanks for the feeding of our ‘millionth child.’ On the fields in front of the school kitchen where our meals are now served to queues of laughing children, we sang with grateful hearts and danced with joy, stamping on the injustice of a world where far too many still go hungry, where so many live in poverty, where too many children never experience the opportunities education can bring.

The reaching of this big number is important. In the years that have passed since we began by feeding just 200 children in 2002, we have seen that Mary’s Meals really works and I think the reaching of this momentous milestone not only gives encouragement to our army of volunteers and supporters around the world, but also enables us to tell the world even more loudly that our vision is possible: We can provide every child with a daily meal in school in this world of plenty!

But, of course, in another sense this landmark changes nothing. Not for the children who are still waiting for Mary’s Meals. The same hunger continues to gnaw at their tummies, waste their limbs and slay each of their precious dreams.

And so our desire to reach them—the 57 million children who are out of school around the world today, the millions more who suffer from chronic hunger—burns as brightly as it ever did. Perhaps even more brightly, in fact, because we can now see so clearly how our meals change things forever —children are coming to school in their droves to receive their nutritious daily meal, concentrate on their studies and then grow up to become men and women who can lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.

Among those celebrating at Chirimba was a gifted young member of our staff. I looked over as Dyson stood beside his motorbike, smiling broadly as he watched the children frolicking around us. Dyson is an orphan who once ate our meals in school. He is adamant that without Mary’s Meals he wouldn’t be here today.

And so, even as we rightly celebrate this moment and give thanks, I find myself thinking about the countless villages in Haiti, Liberia, Zambia, Kenya, India, Malawi and elsewhere, where children are waiting for us, and some words of Mother Teresa’s come to mind: “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” Thank you.

Many Scottish Catholic Observer readers will be familiar with the Mary’s Meals Rags to Riches and Raffle teams, who visit local parishes to spread the word about our work. Their efforts are lauded by Magnus

MacFarlane-Barrow in his book, The Shed that Fed a Million Children: “A formidable group of 50 volunteers from the Glasgow area had begun to visit a different parish every Sunday where the parishioners had been previously invited to bring their unwanted clothing and bric-a-brac to place in the back of our van on their way to church. These goods were taken back to our warehouses and categorised. Some ended up on containers and trucks headed for Liberia, while others were sent to be sold in our charity shops, which were also being set up and run by groups of amazing, dedicated volunteers.

“The team collecting goods at the parishes then also began to give talks to the congregations at the invitation of the priests and ministers, and then to sell raffle tickets outside the churches as the congregations left. In time they recruited an incredibly committed team—among whom were teenagers, elderly people, a lady in a wheelchair and a blind gentleman—big enough to be present in at least three parishes each weekend and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds. They created massive awareness and respect for our work. To this day they continue this initiative, sacrificing their weekends, wind, rain or shine, and they humble me and teach me with their good cheer and self-giving love. I like to describe our work as just a series of lots and lots of little acts of love, and when I do so, I

usually think of them standing outside a church in the face of the horizontal Scottish rain.”

— The Shed that Fed a Million Children by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow is out now, published by William Collins (ISBN: 9780008127640). Available now from good bookstores and online

— If you or someone you know would like to help Mary’s Meals reach more children with a daily meal in school by volunteering with the Rags to Riches or Raffle teams, please call 0141 336 7094 or e-mail your enquiry to: [email protected]