MARY’S MEALS FOUNDER MAGNUS MACFARLANE-BARROW CONTINUES TO WRITE ABOUT HIS TRIP TO THE US

The next morning Patty and I arrived in Dallas, home of cowboys, JR Ewing, oil wells and a certain young lady called Abigail Gibney who has recently galvanized her high school and many others into action for Mary’s Meals.

McKinney High gave us an incredible welcome and was branded from top to bottom with Mary’s Meals posters and welcome signs. Teachers and students wore T-shirts proclaiming eleven dollars (the amount it costs to feed a child for a year) and leather bracelets inscribed with ‘A Simple Solution’ on them.

Together they have already raised enough to sponsor a school in Malawi and in the process have introduced Mary’s Meals to several other High Schools in Texas. I would like to think Abigail could run Mary’s Meals one day but I think she might be too busy being President of America or something.

Her dad is an old friend of mine from Scotland and it was a blessing to spend a night with the amazing Gibney family, before heading the next morning to Florida. Here we had an appointment at Ave Maria university. We had a wonderful time speaking to a group of students here who have recently formed a global awareness club.

It was also a privilege to meet Jim Towey the university President who was once a very close friend and helper of Mother Teresa. The next morning it was an early flight to lovely leafy, Charlotte in North Carolina, home of Tom and Mary Lynn Moser, who are board members of Mary’s Meals USA.

They hosted a lovely evening event at which I had the chance to tell lots of nice people about our work. That group is also raising money to provide Mary’s Meals to another whole school in Malawi.

Next day, back in New York, I visited Grassroots who are making an amazing film about our work. Ana Laffont (another board member of Mary’s Meals USA) Patty and I watched a couple of short sections of the film that are now nearly complete.

Our friends from Grassroots wanted to know immediately what we felt but we were unable to speak for some time afterwards. Emotional wrecks after three mins, we wondered what effect the complete 26 min film will have. ‘Don’t worry there will be some funny bits too.’ they said. I’m sure there will be, because Mary’s Meals is like that.

Patty, our US co-ordinator, picked me up at the airport and we headed straight for a Jazz Club in Manhattan. On the way there she showed me a letter she had just received from an inmate in a prison in Kansas. ‘Although we are in prison we have not lost our humanity’ read the letter and he explained how he had organised a collection from fellow prisoners. A cheque for over 1,000 US dollars was enclosed.

I was really moved. Just a couple of days earlier I had been speaking to an old friend, a chaplain at a prison in England, where inmates are also collecting for Mary’s Meals. It seems we are right when we say EVERY person can choose to do something for Mary’s Meals.

It was still early when we arrived at Swing 46 and the club was empty, apart from Judith, the owner, who we had come to meet. She greeted us warmly and we chatted at the bar. She plans to do monthly events for Mary’s Meals here and raise funds for a new kitchen. She thinks it is high time Mary’s Meals became better known in New York and she aims to do something about it! I left feeling very confident she will do just that, and many people will have a good time in the process.

From there we drove over to Harrington Park in New Jersey arriving just in time for Mass at a little wooden church called Our Lady of Victories. It was Sunday, and the feast of the Divine Mercy, and the church was packed. My old friend Brother Francis was there. He recently painted a remarkable 8ft high version of the famous Divine Mercy image and this picture was displayed at the front of the church.

The priest, Father Conrad, invited me to talk for a couple of minutes at the end of Mass about Mary’s Meals and as they left the church, the people responded in a beautiful way, asking questions about how they could help and stuffing a little basket full of donations. I slept that night at the presbytery and early next morning, with the enormous picture strapped to the roof of his car, Brother Francis drove me to the airport.

The transportation of this unusual cargo reminded us of the times, 20 years ago, when together we would drive a battered small truck around Scotland collecting all kinds of donations in order to transport them to the refugees in Bosnia.

It is the latest batch of help provided by Mary’s Meals which has teamed up with the African relief agency Gift of the Givers in a desperate effort to keep over 40,000 people alive.

The 480 ton shipment of nutritious maize-based porridge Likuni Phala – the same food we provide to children at our school feeding projects in Malawi – will be delivered to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, where tens of thousands of people have fled to in search of food.

We have been working with Gift of the Givers since last September to provide life saving meals for those affected by the famine in Somalia. As planned from the beginning of the emergency response in Somalia, Mary’s Meals will phase out these shipments of food by the middle of the year, by when the worst of the crisis should be over. We will close our public appeal by the end of May.

The further food aid left from Durban in South Africa to Mogadishu, bringing the total amount of food bought by Mary’s Meals so far to nearly 700 tons – the equivalent of over 6.8 million meals.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, chief executive of Mary’s Meals, said: “We are extremely grateful that we have been able to respond to the relief operation during the time of the acute crisis thanks to the amazing support and the generosity of our supporters.

“Meanwhile we continue to focus our work in the poorest communities around the world where families, who cannot feed their children, are facing emergency situations every day.

“We provide daily school meals for such children in places like Haiti, Liberia, Kenya and India, where poor children miss school because they are working in fields, begging on street corners and looking after their younger siblings at home.”

Mary’s Meals feeds over 600,000 children every school day and at the same time draws them into the classroom where they can gain an education which can be their ladder out of poverty.

Gift of the Givers has been providing medical assistance in hospitals and has set up four feeding camps within Mogadishu, which are now catering for 40,000 malnourished people. We have been able to directly reach those in need in Somalia thanks to our partnership with Gift of the Givers which has been able to gain secure entry and exit.

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

Even if you wanted to, it would be hard to escape the sound of children laughing in Malawi. This is a nation with a very young population and you hear this – and see it – wherever you go.

On the highest part of the Lilongwe-to-Blantyre road, near the point from where, on a clear day, you can just see the lake in the distance and the faint blue mountains of Mozambique beyond, we stopped in a remote spot to film.

Whenever there was a gap in passing traffic, and the noise of engines labouring up the hill ceased, the sound of children laughing bubbled up from somewhere below us.

I realised that, at the bottom of a steep drop on the other side of the road, there was a little thatched-roofed village. I couldn’t see them but they were laughing and laughing and laughing. Lots of them. It reminded me of Mother Teresa’s words, when she said: “How can you say there are too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”

Later, we found a beautiful spot to film the sunset, at a school on the road towards Mulanje. A football match had just finished and, when we asked the kids for a kick-about, their coach said they had been playing for a long time and now he was giving them a team talk.

Then someone said we were from Mary’s Meals and they all stood up, burst into big smiles and started shaking our hands and inviting us to play with them!

After a quick game – and with the sun dropping towards the horizon and the sky turning orange – Chuck, Jeff and Cliff (the guys from Grassroots Films) worked with three different cameras and tripods to capture the scene.

I sat on a nearby rock and drank in the beauty and the near silence. Of course, we could still hear some children laughing nearby. On the Mary’s Meals kitchen beside us the sign said: “Morag Pender – In Memory of Her Mother”. I thought about her act of kindness and how there would be less laughter here without it.

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>

• She can choose to be whatever she wants to be >>

• Lette’s school run >>

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

Early yesterday, just as the sun began to rise above the curiously pointed hills near Blantyre, we walked for 20 minutes down steep paths, through a jumble of tin-roofed little homes, across makeshift bridges, and over rubbish-filled streams to meet Lette.

When we arrived she and a younger brother were hunched over a little fire, cooking a meagre pan of morning porridge. Soon their youngest brother Andersen appeared rubbing his eyes, which were clearly still adjusting to the light of day.

He surprises us by shaking our hands solemnly without shyness. Nelia, who runs the Mary’s Meals centres here for children below school age and has come along with us, helps him tie up his trousers.

At 12 years old Lette is the head of this household, while Andersen is just 4 years old. They have rented out their own little hut, and while they live in a one room annex, the money from the tenant helps them to survive.

Lette cries as she speaks to us about the loss of her mother two years ago, her father having passed away some years before. She tells us that sometimes the hunger gives her stomach pains and makes her feel like vomiting.

Lette says that when she feels this way, she always thinks back to how, when her mother was alive, she never went hungry. “But it isn’t hard to look after my brothers,” she says, trying to smile.

After breakfast, Lette gives her little brother his morning bath, stripping off his clothes and pouring a basin of water – just warmed on the fire – over him. She scrubs him with soap, seeming to take delight in the lather she works up in his hair, before meticulously checking his ears and eyes and washing a last bit of ‘sleep’ from them.

Then, after dressing him gently, she hoists him on to her back and walks the mile or so over bridges and up steep paths, and drops him off at the Mary’s Meals centre for children under six years old.

There we watch him play with the other kids. There are over a hundred children, many of them orphans, at this centre run by local volunteers.

Later, they queue up for their morning porridge. The Mary’s Meals volunteers tell us Andersen was very malnourished when his big sister first began taking him here six months ago, but now he is healthy.

Lette meanwhile has already headed home to get ready for her own day at school. She has an exam today and after that she will eat Mary’s Meals herself.

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>

• She can choose to be whatever she wants to be >>

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

It’s currently only 11am here in Malawi, but a bright and early 5am start this morning has allowed us to get off to a wonderful start with filming.

We got to Matindi School sometime before the school day had begun, but sometime after the local volunteers had arrived, and they were already working hard to prepare the firewood and cooking pots.

We filmed the children arriving on foot from all around, some having walked 3km. One of the older boys rang the school ‘bell’ by hitting the metal inner rim of a car wheel, suspended from a tree in the playground.

The old hammer in his hand produced loud and effective clanging. The kids queued for their 7am morning assembly in the dusty playground, at which they sang songs and did some stretching exercises before disappearing into their classrooms.

Most are barefoot and only a few have uniforms. A short while later, the older kids re-emerge from their classrooms and sit in groups under trees, reading to each other from their jotters and discussing questions.

They have important exams soon and so have been asked to study in this way. Meanwhile the volunteers – who have lit their fires and are stirring the likuni phala (nutritious porridge) – break into a loud song as they work.

One of their babies sits contentedly in the dust outside and plays with a stone. Later, the children queue for their porridge – which is for many their first meal of the day – and sit with their friends in the shade of walls and trees to eat.

We talk to some of the children at the school. One of them is 8-year-old Bernadette, an orphan who lives with her granny. She answers our usual questions with sincere answers, but ones we have heard often before.

She says: “Yes I love school”, “Yes, often at home there is nothing to eat”, “Mary’s Meals helps me to concentrate and to learn”, “I work sometimes collecting water, to earn money for food” and then, a surprise! She tells us: “When I grow up I want to be a nun.”

After school we walk home with her and meet her frail grandmother who is looking after other grandchildren as well. Bernadette draws water from a nearby pump and shows us how she can carry a heavy load on her head.

Outside they have a meagre pile of maize hobs, and some ground maize powder drying in the sun. I tell her granny that I was surprised when Bernadette told me she wanted to be nun. Her granny, looking a little shocked, tells me that Bernadette had never mentioned it to her before.

“But that is fine,” she says, “when Bernadette grows up she will have an education and so she can choose to be whatever she wants to be.”

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>

By Mary’s Meals founder and CEO Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

A few years ago my sister Ruth and I watched a film made by New York film company Grassroots Films. Having absolutely loved it, we mused that Grassroots would be the perfect people to make a film about Mary’s Meals one day.

Every now and then, during the time since, I have thought about this idea again – usually when we were discussing our growing desire for a really special Mary’s Meals film.

Then, last year out of the blue, Patty Decker, our co-ordinator in the USA, mentioned in passing that she was going to be interviewed by Grassroots (on a subject unrelated to her work with Mary’s Meals).

I told her my dream about them making a film with us and asked her to mention this to them. When she did, it turned out that some of the Grassroots team already new of Mary’s Meals and had a real desire to do something for us!

I was amazed but not too hopeful, because making a film – especially one that needs filmed in several different countries – is expensive.

A little while later I mentioned this to a friend who was already an incredibly kind supporter of Mary’s Meals and, to my absolute amazement, she said she loved the sound of it, thought it could be hugely important in helping our work grow and  she would be delighted to provide the funding! The generosity of people and the different ways that people find to support Mary’s Meals never ceases to amaze and humble me.

So here I am boarding a plane with three of the Grassroots team heading for Malawi, Kenya and India during the next 11 days. We’ve already been filming the last couple of days, at our base at Craig Lodge, Dalmally, where this work was born 20 years ago. It has been a great start.

Chuck, Cliff and Jeff are all huge Braveheart fans and I suspect were a little disappointed that most of us weren’t wearing kilts or wielding  swords – although my dad’s Highland eccentricity did compensate a bit. They loved Kilchurn castle, as well as our head office in the tin shed and even the rolling clouds and mist.

I’m now really excited, as always, at the thought of spending some time in the communities where children receive Mary’s Meals and, as always, feel a sense of privilege at having the opportunity to do this.

I hope this film will give many supporters of Mary’s Meals, who may never be able to travel to these countries themselves, the chance to ‘meet’ these communities and children in a new way.  And I hope the film will allow many others to become aware of this beautiful work, through which so many lives are being changed.

We’re almost ready for take-off. Time to turn off all electrical items! Next stop Addis Ababa in Ethiopia en route to Malawi. We should make it to our final destination of Blantyre before the sun sets tomorrow, if all goes to plan.

Check back soon for Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s next blog on the film’s progress.

Filming at Dalmally Primary School

Work on an ambitious and exciting project that will soon provide Mary’s Meals with a new and compelling awareness raising tool recently got underway.

A professional film crew from New York, USA, arrived in Scotland in early March to begin shooting a new film on the work of the charity which now provides meals for more than 600,000 children every day at school, in 16 different countries around the world. It is hoped that the film will prove invaluable in spreading the Mary’s Meals message to even more people around the world.

During their time in Scotland, the team from Brooklyn-based Grassroots Films shot footage in and around the village of Dalmally, Argyll, where the work of Mary’s Meals began many years ago during an appeal to help people suffering as a result of the Bosnian Conflict.

Charity founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow was interviewed in his office, the humble garden shed where food, blankets and other items of aid were stored during the original appeal before being driven to Bosnia, and still the international headquarters of Mary’s Meals to this day.

The Grassroots team interview Charlie Docherty

They also spoke to 12-year-old Charlie Docherty, a remarkable young supporter who has been fundraising for Mary’s Meals since the age of six, and visited Dalmally Primary School where pupils performed a short play called The Magic Porridge Pot, which was inspired by Mary’s Meals.

The crew then filmed the Dalmally children enjoying big mugfuls of likuni phala, the nutritious porridge-like dish which Mary’s Meals feeds to children at its largest project in Malawi in order to attract them to the classroom, where they can gain a basic education.

Following the Scottish leg of filming, the shooting schedule will prove unrelenting over the next few weeks, as the team travels to the charity’s overseas projects in Malawi, Kenya and India, where they will be capturing powerful stories about the work of Mary’s Meals and the people involved with it.

The people at Grassroots Films are no strangers to captivating subject matter, having produced and released the award-winning documentary film The Human Experience in 2008.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who will be blogging on the Mary’s Meals website about the film project as it develops, said: “I hope this film will give many supporters of Mary’s Meals, who may never be able to travel to these countries themselves, the chance to ‘meet’ these communities and children in a new way. Furthermore, I hope the film will allow many others to become aware of this beautiful work, through which so many lives are being changed.”

We have been able to keep the costs of providing Mary’s Meals low with the average global cost for this year being just $16.80.

This has increased from last year’s figure of $15 largely due to rising food costs and unprecedentedly high fuel prices which have had a significant impact on transport costs.

In Malawi, where we are now feeding over half a million children, the cost for us to provide Mary’s Meals for an entire school year is $11.

Despite some fluctuations in food costs in the region, we have kept our spending low as the growing volume of hungry children we feed has enabled us to become more cost-effective. We continue to save money in Malawi, and across all our projects, because we obtain resources locally and rely on the input of volunteers.

We work extremely hard to keep our overhead costs low and remain committed to ensuring at least 93 cents of every dollar that is donated goes on our charitable work.

All 45 of our pre-school under six centres have been buzzing with excitement and anticipation which is a time of fun for both children and volunteers alike.

Little girls are all dressed in their best outfits – shiny, shimmery fabric in blues, pinks and whites; little boys in their best shorts or trousers and shirts. Despite the efforts the little ones make, their hardships in life are evident through the little rips and wear and tear of their best clothes. Though all one can see on their dear faces is eagerness and wide smiles.

Children at under-six Christmas parties

The children chant a few nursery rhymes and show us what they have learnt for the year and at one centre, the head volunteer gives a speech thanking Mary’s Meals for their contribution, without which the centre would not survive. Then it’s time for snacks and a little present.

Each child enjoyed glasses of refreshing orange juice along with packets of corn curls, after which the Under Six team distributed bars of colourful soap to the children. The bars were received with beaming smiles by the children.

The children had already received early Christmas presents at the end of school year parties we threw in July. Each present had been painstakingly packed. Inside the plastic bag each child received were clothes, toothpaste, toothbrush, washing soap, biscuits, crisps, juice, soft toys and a game of some sort.

Attending these Christmas Parties reinforces some of the reasons why people who celebrate Christmas do so – that is of sharing and spreading joy. These Christmas parties help us remember to share with those and appreciate those who are less fortunate.

Certainly, these children embody the love and abundance of joy that is Christmas and after one witnesses their patience and absolute happiness with the most simple of presents – one cannot help but love them all the more.