Here is a Scottish father of seven who feeds two and a half million hungry mouths

"The sufni, from which more than 2 million children get food" - this is the title of the volume describing the history of the international charity organization Mary's Meals.

The Scottish father of seven, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who founded and leads the community fighting for the eradication of child hunger, came to our country for the book launch. Thanks to Mary's Meals (Mária's kitchen in Hungarian), two and a half million children in the poorest parts of the world now get food every school day, and we Hungarians can also contribute to this noble goal.

A child can be fed once a day for the whole school year for 22 euros, i.e. HUF 8,800, claims the Scottish entrepreneur, who was chosen as a CNN Hero and Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

To live well and go to school

The story of Mary's Meals began in 2002 with feeding "just" 200 children in Malawi, after MacFarlane-Barrow met a mother who was dying of AIDS locally. The woman's oldest child, a teenager, expressed his life's dream in this way: "I want to have enough to eat and to go to school one day." And today it can already be shown that where children receive "Mary's bread", the number of school enrollments, school visits and school qualifications increases. The organization provides one meal a day - at local prices, a cup of porridge containing valuable nutrients can be made from 22 euros per year - at the teaching places, thus encouraging the children to go to school, thanks to which they can later get out of poverty.

The initiative is based on the principle of "those who have more than enough should share it with the needy".

As a very recent example of the practical realization of this, the founder told in Budapest that recently the students of a high school in the Scottish Highlands decided to eat cheaper and put the resulting savings into the common fund. In one week, 12,000 euros were collected, which provides meals for 600 poor children for one school year.

The goal of the organization is to use at least 93 percent of the donations it receives directly for charitable activities, with only the rest for operations.

"Once, in Colombia, I asked a six-year-old boy who was growing up in deep poverty, who was lying on a piece of cardboard on the street, who was his best friend," shared the story of the head of Mary's Meals. - He answered that it was God. I asked why. "Because it gives me everything I need," he replied. Since then, I always think about that before I complain. There was also the case that we were helping in Bosnia and because of an emergency we used all the money in our bank account, £4,200, to help the local people. Only my wife and I knew about it. After that, I asked God to somehow help me survive - and by the time I got home, a check for £4,200 was waiting at home... It was sent anonymously by a priest in Northern Ireland."

"But I also don't forget that I met the most generous desire to donate next to the Glasgow football stadium, in front of the "bloody" Rangers-Celtic rally, the fans opened their hearts and wallets incredibly."

Source: The Times

Medjugorje, the family cake, and then the world

The activity of Mary's Meals actually started from the Mary's Shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the MacFarlane-Barrow family supported the war-torn local population in the nineties. They were impressed by the generous amount of donations that came from civilians - and ended up in the refugee camps near Medjugorje - and from then on, they never let go of the relief work.

Since the lives of the participants of their very first project were forever changed by the pilgrimages to Medjugorje, they decided to name the organization in honor of Mary, the mother of Jesus, but they respect members of all religions and help atheists as well.

Today, they have reached the point where more than 2.4 million children - who would otherwise be working in the fields, begging on the streets or picking up garbage to avoid starvation - can sit in school classrooms full and able to concentrate on learning to read and write. This could even put an end to aid dependency for some of the next generations. The result is largely due to Mary's Meals volunteers, who are recruited from around 20 countries. They are now also waiting for people from Hungary to join the community.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow also shared his personal experiences at the book launch. It turned out, for example, that the sufni, which also appears in the title of the book, was their family's shed, in which they collected the first aid packages until they were transported abroad. The room was inherited from his father, and to this day it is the foundation's headquarters, a bit of a symbol of simplicity and closeness to people - instead of, say, an expensive, modern office.

Just as the symbol of their activity is a mug, because, for example, children from Malawi or Zambia, who before could never eat at their school, are now amazingly happy even with a mug of nourishing porridge. But MacFarlane-Barrow also has the important experience that people in Africa, living in the deepest poverty, start the day with dancing and singing. Finally, he also noted that by now it has been proven to him many times that, refuting the jokes about them, the Scots are not narrow-minded, but good-natured.

Among the stars, in a kilt

"In 2010, when I was chosen as a CNN hero, I had to give a strictly 45-second thank-you speech at a ceremony with 16 million views, and moreover, I was the first on the show," the awardee enlivened. – Even during the extremely unpleasant make-up and hairstyle, I was sure that I had to thank God and the Virgin Mary, but I wondered if I would fit in the time frame, if this would be cut out, I morphed.

I appeared in a tartan skirt with a leather purse at my side. Jon Bon Jovi warmly welcomed me, then Hollywood actor Gerard Butler introduced me to the audience.

In the end, everything fit into what I had to say, there was no need to cut it out. Then Butler revealed behind the scenes: his mother always talks about me, and it also turned out that we both support Celtic. Then, to a huge surprise, he personally introduced Demi Moore, who the family always teased at home, ever since I once remarked how pretty she was. He also congratulated her with tears in her eyes. However, I don't know since then, I was asked to take so many photos together because of my activity or my Scottish physicality", we could find out in the end of another story, and then we got to know the Hungarian goodwill ambassadors of Mary's Meals, including Otigba Kenneth, a two-time Hungarian national football player. The athlete, who was born in Nigeria and grew up in Hungary from the age of four, also confirmed that Mária's bread is an invaluable help to needy families in Africa.

It's a mirror image

Featured image: brignews.com