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As children in the global north return to school after the long summer holiday period, Mary’s Meals is marking a powerful milestone: now serving vital meals to more than 3 million children every school day – an extraordinary increase of around 800,000 children since the start of 2024.
For children living in areas affected by climate change, acute food insecurity or the aftermath of conflict, the promise of a meal served in a place of education can be the difference between attending school or staying home. There are currently 71 million primary school-age children who are out of school – a figure higher than the total number of children enrolled in primary education in the UK, Europe, USA, and Canada – but research shows that effective school feeding creates a powerful incentive to attend.
Mary’s Meals Founder and CEO, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, said the charity celebrated the milestone on 8 September, the day of Our Lady’s birthday.
“Despite this big number of 3 million, for me Mary’s Meals remains a very simple thing, something very small, something that each of us can play a part in. Each one of us can feed at least one child. We don’t always have to think about the big numbers – we prefer to think of one child at a time. Each of them has a name, each of them is loved by God.”
This milestone follows a major scale-up of Mary’s Meals’ school feeding programmes across nine countries, seeing hundreds of thousands of children added to the programme over an 18-month period, including in Malawi, Haiti, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region, the charity has expanded its reach by more than 700 per cent, growing from around 30,000 children in early 2024 to more than 245,000 children today. This is giving life-changing nutritional support to children who have endured years of conflict, suffering, and disruption to their education.
In Malawi and Zambia, two of the charity’s longest running school feeding programmes have also grown significantly – reaching more than 400,000 additional children and bringing the total to more than 1.3m children in Malawi and over 605,000 in Zambia. This is at a time when communities in both countries are enduring the effects of drought, flooding, and other extreme weather events alongside economic challenges. Against a backdrop of political unrest and violence in Haiti, Mary’s Meals has been able to work with its delivery partners to increase the number of children who receive meals through its much-needed programmes to more than 196,000 children.
Renewed call for support
To mark this historic moment in the fight to end child hunger, Mary’s Meals is making a renewed call for global support for its school feeding programmes that target children living in high-need and hard-to-reach areas. And as more than a quarter of all children worldwide face severe food poverty in early childhood amounting to more than 181 million children under five, the need for consistent school feeding programmes has never been more acute.
“This landmark is less a celebration than it is a call to action. We invite every person of good will to join the Mary’s Meals movement so that our vision – that every child in this world receives one daily meal in their place of education – might be realised. Whilst it is an amazing thing that this work has grown to reach 3 million children, the sad reality is that tens of millions of children remain hungry and out of school,” said Mr MacFarlane-Barrow.
The growth of Mary’s Meals is testament to the number of people who believe in its vision – that every child should receive a meal at school – and who share their time and resources to make this vision a reality.
