Marie de Nazareth
To Jesus, through Mary
Mary's Meals is a continuing success story...
The story.
The story started in 1992 during the Bosnian conflict. Magnus McFarlane Barrow and his brother Fergus, two scottich fish-farmers in Argyll, took a jeep load of aid from their home to Medjugorje in Bosnia. Magnus decided to give up his job for a year to drive the aid. The public did not stop and it soon became necessary to set up a registered charity. Scottish International Relief (SIR) became a registered charity in 1993.
SIR's work then extended into building homes for abandoned children in Romania and setting up mobile clinics for returning refugees in Liberia.
The feeding programme of Mary's meal.
In 2002 started a feeding programme for 200 children in Malawi during a famine.
It has grown into a major international feeding programme, now feeding around 460,000 children, at school, in 16 countries - Most of them (391,378) in Malawi ; the others in Albania, Kenya, Liberia, Uganda, the Philippines, Romania and Ukraine, Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan and Zambia, Burma and Thailand.
Vision, mission and values.
Our mission is to ensure that every child gets at least one meal a day in a place of education, in order to escape the spiral of poverty.
Average cost of Mary's Meals per child per year = £9.40 / €11 / $15
It was named Mary's Meals after Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is a symbol of a mother trying to bring up a child in abject poverty.
Mary's Meals is a non denominational charity supported by people of all faiths and none, and feeding children of all faiths and none.
Mary's Meals relies on the involvement of volunteers, volunteers to fundraise and volunteers to deliver the food at school.
We believe in the willingness of people to respond generously when informed of the needs of those suffering extreme poverty. We strive to communicate those needs on behalf of the poor.
We believe that those who require our aid should be seen, not as the problem but as people who can become the principal builders of a new, more human future for everyone. Therefore we are committed to giving help without ever coercing those who accept it into changing their beliefs or creed, or without ever judging their past behaviour.
We respect the right to life of every human person, from conception until natural death.
We never create a culture of dependency on aid.
We believe that every volunteer and member of staff has a unique and crucial role to play in the fulfillment of our mission. We strive to keep our fundraising and administration costs very low to maximise the amount of resources we direct towards those we are helping.
Informations :
(or : https://www.marysmeals.org/)