A scottish charity feeding more than a million children daily has added 211 more schools thanks to a campaign backed by The Herald.
The Feed the Future appeal by Mary’s Meals asked people to donate just £12.20, enough to feed a child in Africa for a year. The UK Government promised to double every donation and the appeal raised £5million.
A year into the project, the money is being spent in Malawi and Zambia to provide thousands more children with a daily meal of phala, a vitamin-enriched porridge which Mary’s Meals provides to 1.1 million children every day.
The aim is to ensure many of the world’s poorest children have at least one daily nutritious meal and to encourage them to stay in school. One of the children benefitting is 14-year-old Fyness Mdala, who lost her parents when she was six and lives with her grandmother.
“My grandmother has been going begging for food,” she said. “We depend on what she receives from well-wishers and if we can’t find any food we go hungry for one or two days.
“At those times the phala is the only meal I will eat.”
The teenager also said she would not be in school if Mary’s Meals was not providing food.
She said: “If the porridge wasn’t here, I would have quit school. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate in class on an empty stomach.”
The money raised has also been used to train more cooks in Malawi and Zambia, like 52-year-old Esme, who volunteers to prepare the porridge for the children at Mudi Primary School in Malawi.
She says: “I felt it necessary to do my part in developing the community,” she said.
“I love the community spirit the volunteering has created between the women from different villages and the porridge is making the children look healthy.”
The Mary’s Meals charity was founded in 2002 by Scot Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow after he visited Malawi during a famine and met a mother dying of Aids.
When he asked the woman’s son what his dreams in life were, the boy replied: “I want to have enough food to eat and to go to school one day.”Mr MacFarlane-Barrow said: “In the challenging times we are facing today, school feeding is more important than ever to provide children with essential sustenance, stability, and hope for a better future.
“The generosity of Mary’s Meals supporters and the wider public, combined with UK Aid Match funding, has enabled us to reach many more children who, without Mary’s Meals, would be out of school today.”
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