Mary's Meals Project

A talk by Andrew Parker from a Scottish based charity Mary's Meals inspired Duns Rotarians to help because of its unique approach to feeding and educating children in the third world. The charity encourages hungry children into the classroom by providing them with a daily meal in school. The food they get may be the only meal they have some days so it helps to deal with world hunger but even more importantly the education they gain is often their liberation from chronic poverty. We thought this was a brilliant way of raising the amount and standard of education in third world countries.

Equally impressive though are the steps the charity takes to ensure that the local community supports the project and benefits from it. Mary's Meals workers involve the local community at every step and won't develop a kitchen unless the community asks for it. The Kitchen will be built using local people and local materials. Cooking and managing the kitchen is carried out by local volunteers. The food for the meals is bought locally. So at every stage there is a community input and a community benefit.

The charity suggests various levels of support and our aim is to sponsor the building of a school kitchen in Malawi.  The kitchen will be fitted out with fuel- efficient cooking stoves and provides every child with a standard size plastic cup. The kitchen can also double as an extra class room.

For our part we have to raise