Mary's Meals

The History of Mary's Meals

Mary’s Meals grew out of a charity called Scottish International Relief (SIR), which was set up after Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother Fergus took aid from their home in Argyll, Scotland, to Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the conflict in 1992.

Over the next 10 years, SIR expanded. It began building homes for abandoned children in Romania, helped returning refugees in Liberia by setting up mobile clinics, and continued to deliver material aid to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as funding many additional projects.

SIR relied heavily on the generosity of local people in the village of Dalmally in Argyll, Scotland, who diligently donated food, blankets and other items of aid, which were then stored in the family shed. That same shed still serves as the global headquarters of Mary’s Meals to this day.

Mary's Meals was founded in 2002

The Mary’s Meals campaign was born in 2002 when Magnus visited Malawi during a famine and met a mother dying from AIDS. When Magnus asked her eldest son Edward what his dreams were in life, he replied simply: “I want to have enough food to eat and to go to school one day.”

That moment was a key part of the inspiration which led to the founding of Mary’s Meals, which began by feeding just 200 children in Malawi in 2002. Today, we feed 2,429,182 hungry children every school day across 18 countries.

The charity is named in honour of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who brought up her own child in poverty.