General Meeting: March 2025

Jane Wright was a trained primary teacher who changed careers to work for Mary’s Meals, a charity providing meals to schoolchildren in the poorest areas of the world.

She is based in the East Midlands and East Anglia and she introduced us to the charity and its fundraising. Jane wanted to increase awareness in the charity. Magnus Macfarlane Barrow lived in Dalmally, Scotland and in 1992 he set off to Bosnia where he began providing meals for children. His idea that feeding and education must go together gathered momentum and he ran his new charity from a shed in Dalmally and he is still there.

The charity now reaches 16 countries and 2.6 million children. The charity was a simple solution to world hunger and Jane described it as being “low cost but high impact”. Everywhere the charity reaches uses local food, small holdings, local volunteers and community involvement. The children are provided with a nourishing breakfast before lessons, often porridge or similar, which is cooked by the local mothers and helpers. Attendance and academic success as well as happiness and job opportunities all improved when children were no longer hungry.

Jane’s talk was interrupted a couple of times by gremlins interfering with her microphone but she was completely unfazed by it and delivered a wonderful insight to a truly inspirational charity.