On Sunday 20th February, we welcomed Hannah Moore from Mary’s Meals who came to talk to us about the Mary’s Meals project and how this is feeding millions of children worldwide and enabling them have a decent meal at school. It has been shown that children who do not eat properly are unable to concentrate adequately and therefore their learning is impaired.
Hannah’s talk was based around three points:
- Seeing a need and being moved with compassion
- The generosity of people
- The miraculous provision of Jesus
She used the Feeding of the Five Thousand story from John 6:1–15 where Jesus sees the need of the people in front of him, the boy’s lunch of fish and barley loaves is freely given and then Jesus’ miraculous provision is used to feed the mass of people there by means of that small offering.
Mary’s Meals uses the same principles. There is a tremendous need: it is estimated that there are over 65 million primary school-age children worldwide going to school too hungry to learn and that is a shocking statistic. The founder of Mary’s Meals, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother saw this need, started the whole project in the 1990s and by 2002 they were able to start feeding 200 children in Malawi. Roll forward to 2026 and Mary’s Meals now feeds over three million children in 16 countries, an extraordinary achievement.
They base their work on three principles.
- Local communities are consulted before agreeing to provide food for a school. Everyone has to be on board for Mary’s Meals to be a success. Community ownership is essential to their work.
- Volunteers are trained in health and safety and they cook the food. They have to turn up early in the morning to start the fires to cook the rice or porridge. Local people cooking for their own children means that they own and develop their own community.
- The food is sourced, grown and farmed locally and the farmers are paid a fair price for the crops. Again this means that local people grow the food for their own community, so the bond is there and develops.
Hannah showed us a short video showing a small village at Chaone Mountain in Malawi. The village is three miles up on the mountain, but Mary’s Meals were able to deliver the food to the bottom of the mountain, and the villagers did the rest. Click the image below to watch the video. It’s both moving and joyful.
If you would like to donate to the work of Mary’s Meals, see their web site at https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/ and click the Donate button. It costs incredibly little to feed a child at school for a whole year. Please help them in their work.