Children eating Mary’s Meals in Cité Soleil, Haiti, 2006. (Angela Caitlin)
Father Garry Jenkins walking with the Gola people, 2004. (Colin Mearns)
Father Tom Hagan in one of his schools in Haiti, 2006. (Angela Caitlin)
Volunteers serving food in Malawi.
Gay Russell with the plane she flies for a sugar company.
Likuni Phala at a factory in Blantyre, Malawi. All ingredients are grown in the country.
Volunteers cooking Likuni Phala, Malawi.
Gerard Butler and Magnus learning how to carry water in Liberia, 2014. (Chris Watt)
Queuing for porridge, Malawi.
A girl in India, learning to write.
Annual Medjugorje Youth Festival, 2012.
Magnus and Julie (just out of shot, behind Magnus) meet Pope Francis, 2013.
A child in Myanmar eating Mary’s Meals.
Pupils at a school in Blantyre, Malawi.
Attila, one of the first of the children in our homes in Romania to die.
Children from Dalmally primary school help paint the shed in 2011.
Head teacher Mr Sapuwa, happy to report startling results after the introduction of Mary’s Meals at his school.
Acknowledgements
Dear Julie, I would haven’t have finished page one without your encouragement and I thank you with all my heart. Thank you for always believing in me despite all the evidence to the contrary. My dear children – Calum, Ben, Martha, Toby, Bethany, Anna and Gabriel – the fact that you older ones never once complained about me being even more busy and distracted than normal, and you younger ones almost never scribbled or drew pictures on my manuscript, and hardly ever ate any of my pages, makes me proud. Dear Mum and Dad, thank you. Without you there would be no Shed, no Mary’s Meals – and no me either come to think of it.
Thank you colleagues at Mary’s Meals; without your tireless work all of those children would not be eating in school today and I know I do not thank you nearly enough. Katy thank you in particular for moving me from talking about the idea of this book to actually doing something about it. Daniel, Kim and Louise, thank you for all your hard work and advice, and for being so patient with this cranky, insecure first time author. Sonia thank you for believing in this project from the first time I met you, and to all of you at Harper Collins – Andy, Minna, Morwenna, Jean Marie – you have all been so very kind and a joy to work with.
I also want to thank every single one of you around the world who takes part in this mission. I hope those of you I write about in this book are happy with the way I have retold our stories and that those of you who have walked this road with me for many years, but who do not feature within, understand that I simply couldn’t fit it all in one book!
And thank you Jesus for it all. It is all yours, the praise, the glory, the things that have happened and those still to come.
www.marysmeals.org.uk
About the Author
Born in Aberdeen in 1968, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow started his career as a fish farmer. When the Balkan conflict began, he and Fergus, his brother, were so moved by the scenes on television that in 1992 they gathered a jeep load of aid and joined a convoy travelling to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On his return home, Magnus discovered that the public had carried on donating, filling his parents shed in Dalmally with goods. Magnus gave up his job for a year to drive the aid out for as long as it was needed and kept being given. Donations did not stop and soon it became necessary to set up as a registered charity, then known as Scottish International Relief.
Today, Mary’s Meals provides nutritious daily meals to a million children across five continents.
Its vision is for every child to receive a daily meal in a place of education. The global average cost of feeding a child for a whole school year is just £12.20.
Magnus was named one of 2010’s ‘Top Ten Heroes’ by broadcaster CNN and received an OBE in the 2011 New Year’s Honours list. He is married to Julie, a nurse, and they live together in Dalmally with their seven children.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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New Zealand
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http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
The Shed That Fed a Million Children Page 26