Mary's Meals

This evening, we were addressed by Mr Dick Heuchan, who acquainted us with the Charity know as Mary's Meals. This charity, formerly known as Scottish International Relief, was founded in 2002 and has grown from its first feeding operation of 200 children in Malawi, to a world-wide campaign providing free school meals in hundreds of schools and feeding over 500,000 children daily. Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, the charity's founder, believes that it is possible to combat and defeat world hunger and encourage education by the simple method of providing school meals. High profile supporters of Mary's Meals include the entrepreneur and Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne and the philanthropist Sir Tom Farmer. One of Mary's Meals' key projects is based in Malawi where over 400,000 children are now receiving Mary's Meals, a daily meal of 'likuni phala', a vitamin-laced porridge of Malawi-grown maize, cooked by volunteer mothers at the childrens' schools. Mary's Meals now helps feed children in Albania, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Malawi, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Burma and Thailand. Their awareness and fundraising efforts include the Backpack Project and World Porridge Day.