The Shed That Fed a Million Children

by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

  If one fact should resonate in our minds after viewing Child 31, it might be that the average cost of a lunch in the United States could feed a child in a developing country for an entire year.

  Mary’s Meals feeds over half a million children every single day, encouraging them to attend school and receive an essential education at the same time. It’s not rocket science and it really works.

  I particularly liked her last sentence. Some development experts criticize Mary’s Meals (and advise the governments and institutional donors whom they work for not to fund us), suggesting we make it all sound too simple and that this approach of feeding children cannot be sustainable. The environments we work in, the challenges we need to overcome to ensure the schools have food every day, and the problems that people in poverty battle with, are certainly anything but simple. But our core approach is. Annie Lennox, like everyone else who has met us and visited a Mary’s Meals project, certainly knows we are not rocket scientists, but she is also in no doubt that we don’t need to be. The tens of thousands who support us with small donations all over the world and the thousands who cook for the kids in their communities are generally not rocket scientists or ‘development experts’ either, but they immediately see that this approach is necessary and life-changing.

  And the question about sustainability always bewilders me because I am not sure what can be more essential in creating long-term sustainable solutions than ensuring children receive the nutrition they require and an education. The word itself – ‘sustainability’ – can be problematic because I notice that people tend to use it in various and often vague ways. I once asked a room full of MBA students who had raised the subject of sustainability to define the word for me, and the spectrum of answers put forward was startling. Actually, ‘sustainable development’ was defined in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission, which was established by the UN to do just that, as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. I cannot see how Mary’s Meals could ever be accused of falling short against that definition and I can only suppose that the issue is much more about timescales. These sorts of funders normally expect an ‘exit strategy’ after three to five years of funding. It seems the perceived wisdom in development circles is that if a project is not complete after that length of time, then it is flawed. We chose to take a different view of how long it takes to build something that will really last and fundamentally change things for the better – and can make that choice because our work is supported by a global movement of people who agree. We choose to create a sustainable approach based on their generosity.

  But there are connected conversations that are harder to reconcile and more disturbing than a difference in opinions about timetables. Once I met with people from an organization running schools in Haiti who realized that many of the kids coming to their schools were chronically malnourished. They asked us about our model and we expressed interest in expanding our project to their schools, so the children would be fed. But they did not want to partner with us because they did not think our approach was ‘sustainable’. I asked them to suggest how they would do this in a ‘sustainable way’ and they said they wanted to work on some things related to micro finance. That was several years ago and to my knowledge the kids attending their schools have never received school meals. I would rather approach this the other way round. The first imperative is the hungry child in front of us. They need food today, not in ten years’ time.

  It makes me sad, when people in development almost talk like these children are the ‘problem’ rather than the principle builders of a new and brighter future. Children of today should never be sacrificed to the Moloch of a future that none of us can know. And the future belongs to those children at least as much as it does to any of us who think we are experts in development.

  But the seeking of celebrity endorsements for Child 31 also prompted some laughs. One day a team of us brainstormed and wrote up a list of famous people. One of the names we agreed on was Pamela Stephenson (the comedian, writer and wife of Billy Connolly). When someone retyped our list they accidentally wrote Pamela Anderson (it wasn’t me, honestly) and one of the team then duly contacted the agent of Pamela Anderson (as in star of Baywatch) to ask if she would endorse Child 31. It was only after she had come back and said that she would love to do this that we realized the mix-up. We were reassured anew of the universal appeal of Mary’s Meals.

  Meanwhile, in addition to Child 31, the Laffonts suggested another precious gift to Mary’s Meals, but this time I needed some persuasion. They told me about the Bridgespan Group, a consultancy firm that specialized in helping charities develop strategies to expand and replicate their successes. Bridgespan had grown out of Bain, the very prestigious, international management consultancy firm that advised many of the world’s largest corporations and governments. Ana and Philippe believed that Bridgespan – who worked only with organizations they felt had potential to replicate their success on a larger scale – might be interested in working with us to help plan for the future, and if so they would be willing to fund this gift also. A lot of this was very new to me, including the language. Terms like ‘scaling up’, ‘tipping points’ and ‘enhancing effectiveness’ all sounded foreign and a bit scary. While I certainly recognized the need to prepare for further growth by strengthening our organization, so that we might continue effectively to feed growing numbers of children, I was concerned about doing something that might undermine our values. I found it hard to believe that these high-powered consultants, hugely respected by very successful businessmen in the USA, would be able to take seriously our aversion to setting monetary targets or our related desire to recognize that ultimately we were not in charge. And I suppose I was a little intimidated, too, by the thought of working with these highly trained, academically gifted people. The thought of them sitting in my shed to discuss strategy with us embarrassed me a little. But by now I knew and trusted the Laffonts enough to agree to meet with Bridgespan, who indicated they would indeed be happy to work with Mary’s Meals, believing they could help us at our stage in development.

  At a second meeting I spelt out my concerns, stating several things relating to our values that were not up for debate. The respectful way they listened and responded left me convinced by the end of the meeting that this was something we should do. The Laffonts’ generosity gave us the opportunity to work with Bridgespan for six months, during which time they helped us form a robust ‘growth plan’. During this time we had some wonderful conversations and found ways to reconcile the ‘divine providence approach’ with the need to plan thoroughly and carefully. Through this work I became good friends with all in the Bridgespan team that we worked with, and today two of them continue to be very involved in Mary’s Meals as board members. A few months after that work with them was finished I visited Boston for the first time, to do a TV interview. When Bridgespan heard I would be in their hometown they invited me to their offices to chat with their staff. They surprised me by having their entire team in a room waiting for me, as well as their people in New York and California on video link-ups. They invited me to talk to them about my experience of leading Mary’s Meals and how I had felt about working with them. After I did that quite briefly, we spent the rest of an hour having a fascinating discussion, developing the theme of reconciling planning with divine providence. By the end of that conversation it was very clear to me that many of them were also motivated by their own deeply held faiths and all were genuinely respectful of the Mary’s Meals approach. This meant an enormous amount to me. I had understood by then that this work with Bridgespan did not undermine or threaten any of our dearly held values; rather it strengthened them and gave us a greater confidence to share, protect and live them. One of the approaches we explored and articulated more clearly than before, was our belief that the Mary’s Meals family should be guided by the principles of ‘solidarity’ and ‘subsidiarity’. While a new centra
l organization – Mary’s Meals International – would work to ensure all the Mary’s Meals entities were bound by our common vision, mission and values (solidarity), it would only carry out tasks that could not be carried out more effectively at a local level. This would allow Mary’s Meals to take on a life best suited to the various situations, cultures and opportunities in which we worked. It also addressed a long-held concern of mine that those of us ‘in charge’ of Mary’s Meals could very easily become the limiting factor, and supported a view that, ideally, Mary’s Meals should be more like a ‘movement’ than a strongly centralized organization. The work with Bridgespan was another gift and another piece of learning that enabled us to work harder than ever to gain more support and remain confident that we would translate new kindnesses into many more meals for hungry children.

  And then, unexpectedly, yet another opportunity to raise awareness of our work appeared. I had continued to stay in touch with Gerard Butler after meeting him at the CNN Heroes award ceremony in 2010. Early in 2013, he got in touch to say he wanted to follow through with his promise to travel to Africa with me to see first hand the work of Mary’s Meals. We discussed where would be most suitable and eventually chose Liberia. We felt it received very little media attention, had desperate needs and was a place where we were determined to reach more children as soon as possible. We knew that the publicity a visit by Gerry would generate could help us to do just that.

  We based ourselves at our compound in Tubmanburg where our Country Director kindly vacated his little two-bedroom house. Things were very basic there – electricity only provided for a few hours a day by a little generator, no air conditioning in the extremely hot and humid climate and nowhere to eat out nearby. But Gerry seemed to love every single moment of it, never once complaining about a single thing. Not even my terrible cooking. He worked from dawn to dusk every day of our stay, travelling to remote villages, spending time getting to know people in each one and making everyone, including me, laugh continuously until our sides ached. It was also wonderful to be able to hide behind him a bit and relax. The welcomes we received in the villages were warmer than ever, and while Gerry delighted our hosts by dancing exuberantly with every one of the dancers in the village – and even some who weren’t dancing – I was able to stay in the background. Dancing while being the centre of attention was never something I enjoyed! We had some good laughs in the evenings about how our personalities were polar opposite – the ultimate extrovert and introvert. I was fascinated by his wonderful gifts. Within seconds of arriving in a village, everyone was smiling and laughing at him despite the language barrier. The children clung to him and he wanted to know everything about their lives. I began to notice that he would remember the name of every person we met in a village. I mentioned this to him and then he began to show off by going back round to each person we had been introduced to, repeating their name. He was also someone who was thinking very deeply about what he was seeing and experiencing. On our last evening, ahead of one long final day’s filming, he produced copious notes that he had been writing: his thoughts on the beauty and importance of Mary’s Meals and the best ways to articulate these. He wanted to choose every single word with painstaking care. His meticulous preparation amazed me, as did his hard work. I had hoped when we set out on this adventure that we might return with a few nice soundbites from Gerry; instead he had gifted us many hours of incredible footage.

  ‘One of the things I have been struck by during this visit is the strength of the people’s dignity, and what I love about Mary’s Meals is that it is all about retaining this. They don’t operate a free system where people are just taking; instead it is all about respecting and promoting the lives of people, their culture and what they are capable of,’ said Gerry to the camera on our final day.

  ‘I see communities full of resilience, integrity, warmth, love and hope. All of that is already here but Mary’s Meals is like a switch that helps flick it on. Magnus believes this is a work of God, and so do I.’

  There were many who agreed with that assessment of who this work belongs to, gathered behind the church in Medjugorje one baking hot summer’s day in 2014. From the stage, I looked out at where vineyards and fields used to be, at a crowd of over 50,000 young people, many waving their national flags. I had been invited again to talk to the youngsters who had assembled for the annual youth festival here. When we had first visited Medjugorje in 1983 as teenagers, we had been among only a handful of pilgrims from other countries. Today it was astounding to look out over this enormous, happy sea of humanity, consisting of people who had been moved from every corner of the globe to gather in this obscure, difficult-to-get-to place. At a time of year when most of their generation were heading to beaches and music festivals these young people had chosen to come here. Most of them were wearing headphones and listening to the translation of our talks on short-wave radio. Lidija, standing beside me, was translating my words into Croatian and, in rows of cubicles in the yellow building where we sometimes held Mary’s Meals conferences, a row of people sat at desks translating the Croatian words into a further nineteen other languages: Italian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Lebanese, Arabic, Korean and many more. I was used to having talks translated, but today it was a little disconcerting to realize that my words were being translated twice and that the young people in front of me were listening to me on their radios. But I had been joined on the stage by a huge group of supporters wearing Mary’s Meals T-shirts and felt reassured by their presence. After my little talk the crowd watched Child 31 on the huge screens. Much of the rest of that week of festival I spent in our little information point, with Milona, chatting to a never-ending stream of happy young people, from China, Mexico, Lebanon and many other countries, who wanted to know more about Mary’s Meals. Some were existing supporters and others were learning of our mission for the first time. A group of Swiss teenagers chatted to us for a long time, asking how best they might fund-raise. As they left one of them turned to me and said, ‘You know, for the first time in my life I really understand that to be a Christian means that you really have to do something!’

  Another memorable conversation I had was with one of the local priests. I mentioned to him the fact that some believed the whole story of apparitions here was a carefully created hoax of the local parish.

  ‘Have you seen all the young people here on their knees in prayer? Queuing for confession? Unable to fit in the church? Have you seen their joy? Have you heard their stories and the talks, like the one you gave, describing some of the fruits of this place?’ he asked me.

  ‘If we made this whole thing up for this last thirty years, if we actually know how to do that, then we should adopt it as a pastoral plan for every parish, every diocese across the world!’ he chortled.

  Maybe I should have suggested that to Pope Francis when he walked with extended arms to greet Julie and me in St Peter’s Square on a scorching hot day in the summer of 2013, but somehow I think he knows more about pastoral plans than I do. A few weeks previously I had answered the phone at home while holding my son Gabriel, who was two years old and crying loudly. It sounded as if the person at the other end of the phone said he was from the Vatican and was asking if I would like to come to meet Pope Francis.

  After hurriedly handing Gabriel to Martha, his older sister, I asked the man at the end of the phone to repeat himself. But I had indeed heard correctly the first time. It was appropriate then that the first thing that Julie did when a beaming Pope Francis reached out and clasped her hands, was to give some cards our kids had made for him, in an envelope marked Pope Francis! in red felt-tip pen. He grinned and asked us how many children we had, before we talked to him a little about Mary’s Meals and I handed him a blue Mary’s Meals mug and a copy of Child 31. He passed these on to one of his aides and continued to clasp both our hands. Then he placed my hand on top of Julie’s and with his still on top he blessed our marriage, his smile growing bigger and more beautiful all the while. I have never
been smiled at like that – with such love – by anyone, and I will never forget it. Of all the unexpected encounters and undeserved treats I have received doing this work this one was the most amazing. After only a few months as Pope he was already my hero – Julie’s too – and for us both to have been blessed by him like that was more than we could have ever hoped for. As always I was painfully aware that there were many around the world involved in Mary’s Meals who should have been further ahead in the long queue waiting to meet this remarkable man.

  Since his election Pope Francis had repeatedly highlighted the ‘scandal of poverty’. Not long before we met him he said that to address this, ‘We all have to think if we can become a little poorer, all of us have to do this.’

  I know that the blessing we received that day was for all who have done just that, while they have shared the bread that belongs to all, with Mary’s Meals and the hungry child.

  12

  Friends in Low Places

  I do not despair of happier times, considering that at the helm of the universe is He who overcomes the storm not by human skill, but by his fiat.

  ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

  Our work in Haiti also began in Medjugorje. On a warm sunny morning in May 2006 I was part of a crowd listening to Jakov, the youngest visionary and now in his mid-thirties, speaking about Our Lady’s messages from the front steps of his house. As always he finished his simple and moving talk with a prayer and then, as I turned to leave, someone in the crowd tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ said the smiling, middle-aged lady in front of me excitedly. ‘I’m Anka – remember we met at the youth festival last year?’