St Mary's Church, Fairford

Sale of Charity Christmas Cards

£357 worth of charity of the month Christmas cards were sold at the church fete on December 3rd – all the money raised has gone direct to the charities concerned.

Thank you all for your support with this new project.
Many thanks
Jo

Charity of the Month:
Mary's Meals

This was a new charity to St Mary’s in 2015. Founded in 2002 by Mary Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow who visited Malawi during a famine and met a mother dying from AIDS. When Mary asked her eldest son, Edward, what his dreams were in life, he replied simply – "I want to have enough food to eat and to go to school one day."

This led to the founding of Mary’s Meals, which reaches impoverished children who can’t get to school because they’re working, begging or doing whatever it takes to eat. Thanks to the efforts of supporters around the world, there are now children sitting in classrooms with full stomachs, gaining an education that can be their ladder out of poverty to the future. Most of the work is done by an army of volunteers, who carry out lots of little acts of love on behalf of Mary’s Meals. Our work is named after Mary, the mother of Jesus, who brought up her own child in poverty. We consist of, respect, and reach out to people of all faiths and none.

The idea is a simple one that works. The charity provides a daily meal in a place of learning to attract chronically poor children into the classroom where they receive an education which can set them free from poverty in later life. Mary’s Meals began by feeding 200 children in Malawi in 2002 – today they are feeding over a million children every school day across four continents. In schools where children receive Mary’s Meals, there is a rise in school enrolment, attendance and attainment. There are 300 million chronically hungry children in the world. Around 57 million of these children are out of school – the work is only just beginning. Running costs are kept low – for every £1 donated at least 93p is spent on the charitable activities.

In effect, by attending school every day children receive not only regular education but also regular daily nourishment which is not constantly available in many families – such a simple idea one wonders why nobody thought of it before! One of the projects run by the charity is the Backpack Project – many children do not have basic things like pens and notepads – donations of filled backpacks are sent on by Mary’s Meals to children who really need them, which enables them to attend school and gain an education that can help them escape from poverty when they grow up.

The information above was written for 2015—things have deteriorated since then. In many third world countries disease has decimated the adult population—frequently leaving children without parents or adult care and is common to find that a child is acting as head of family, caring for the younger children, caring for the sick, obtaining food and water. Marys Meals is playing an even more important role now than when we first supported them. There will be up to date information direct from Marys Meals in church in January which will tell us in more detail about current conditions.

Many people in Fairford have experience of living and working in third world countries and will know from personal experience how hard life is even is "good times" - we hope you will give your support once again to the charity of the month to enable them to continue and extend their work. The Charity continues to be run from Scotland by the same family—their website provides a lot more information.
Website.