THE
P RTAL
Mary’s Meals Supplement
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We realised after starting Mary’s Meals that many
children coming to school didn’t even have a pen or a
pencil or a jotter to begin learning. We started inviting
children in the UK to fill a school bag or a backpack.
Because they have become fashion items these days,
they often get thrown away when they are still perfectly
good to use.
enough food ... and to go to school
“We give them a list of educational items that would
help a child going to school for the first time. We ask the
children to fill them and we ship them overseas to the
children eating Mary’s Meals. I think we have sent well
over 400,000 of those school bags. It’s growing beyond
the UK. Children in Italy and Austria are taking part
in that. It’s a beautiful project at both ends because it’s
something that is very educational for children to fill
those backpacks, both in learning about the place to
which it’s being sent and also, I think, it gives them a
beautiful experience of realising that they personally
can do something that changes the life of a child in a
different part of the world.”
Those words of Edwards were one of the things that
sparked this mission of Mary’s Meals. That recognition
that, over and over again, hungry children don’t go to
school because their first priority is to find food. They
are working, or begging or doing whatever they need
to do to put food on the table. Therefore they miss out
on school. Mary’s Meals became a simple intervention
to try and break that cycle of poverty - the immediate
need of the hungry child for food, but always to do she was a far better truck driver
We thought there must be some personal toll in all
it in a way that enabled them to come into school by
serving that meal always in a place of education. That of this. How did his wife feel when you said ‘We’ll sell
became our mission. One meal every day, in a place the house?’
of education.
“I made those choices before I was married. I met
“I’m a very small part of the whole. Even those who my wife doing this work. She was a nurse who gave up
are lucky enough to be paid staff are a small part of her job to help in Bosnia. She started driving trucks
the whole thing. Overwhelmingly we are a volunteer with me, turned out she was a far better truck driver
organisation. Just in Malawi we have 65,000 volunteers. than me! It was humbling and a good basis for a sound
marriage!
“Malawi is where it was born and it’s still our biggest
“Today we live here and have seven children. It’s a
project. In Malawi we are feeding over 750,000
children every school day, which is about 27% of the huge blessing in my life that Julie is equally passionate
children of primary school age in that country. It’s a about this work, this mission, this calling of ours. I don’t
huge project that is having a massive impact on that feel any great sense of sacrifice or hardship, quite the
opposite in fact. I feel a huge sense of gratitude and
nation.
blessing. I have this almost permanent sense of surprise
from Glasgow to Liberia and beyond
that this has happened and I’m in the middle of it. I love
“We have another team in Liberia which is our it and I wouldn’t want to do anything else with my life.”
second biggest project. Our main office in the UK is in
Glasgow. We have affiliates of Mary’s Meals, set up for
the purpose of fund raising or the purpose of feeding
children in many different countries around the world.
“In terms of our school feeding, we want to buy
food locally so we are supporting the local farmers,
supporting the local economy. Mary’s Meals school
feeding programme is about people donating money
that enables us to buy that food locally.
the Backpack Project
“We run one project alongside Mary’s Meals that is
about donating things, it’s called the Backpack Project.
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