The Princess Royal visits Mary’s Meals

Her Royal Highness joined celebrations at the home of Mary’s Meals, the charity that serves school meals to hungry children around the world. The Princess Royal visited Mary’s Meals shed in the Scottish Highlands to help celebrate the charity’s milestone of feeding three million children every school day. 

“It was a pleasure to welcome Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal to the little shed in the Highlands where the work of Mary’s Meals began.” 

– Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

Mary’s Meals, which began in 2002, by feeding just 200 children, recently announced the incredible three million milestone - one which its Founder, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, “could never have imagined.” 

On Monday, May 11, The Princess Royal joined Magnus and a small group of supporters and volunteers, who have helped to make the charity’s work possible, at the rickety tin shed in the village of Dalmally Scotland, where the charity was founded more than 20 years ago. 

Her Royal Highness spoke with volunteers about their work and unveiled a plaque commemorating the visit, while she also received a gift presented by schoolchildren, a commemorative photo book featuring children whose education is made possible through Mary’s Meals’ school feeding program. 

Mary’s Meals was born when Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, from Scotland, visited Malawi during a famine and met a mother dying from AIDS. When Magnus 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.”

Today, Mary’s Meals provides more than three million school meals a day across 16 countries, including Haiti, South Sudan and Syria. A nutritious meal, funded by a donation of just 16¢, brings hungry children into the classroom, where they can gain an education and better opportunities for the future. 

Magnus, who still works out of the same tin shed which serves as Mary’s Meals’ global headquarters, says: “It was a pleasure to welcome Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal to the little shed in the Highlands where the work of Mary’s Meals began. It was an honour to receive such a prestigious visit soon after achieving the milestone of our school feeding program reaching more than three million children every school day. For someone who grew up in a remote part of Scotland, I never expected to be welcoming Her Royal Highness to Dalmally for a tour of my shed!” 

The milestone follows a major scale-up of Mary’s Meals’ school feeding programs across nine countries, including in Ethiopia’s war-torn region of Tigray, Malawi and Zambia, which are enduring the effects of climate change-induced drought and flooding, and Haiti, a country besieged by political unrest and extreme violence. 

This incredible growth comes amid a backdrop of cuts to international aid budgets and a global cost-of-living crisis, as the low-cost charity, which can feed a child for a whole school year for only $31.70 CAD, continues to punch above its weight. 

Mary’s Meals would not be able to reach these children without its dedicated volunteers, both those who help to serve school meals in their own communities, and those who raise awareness of its mission across Canada. 

Magnus adds: “What began as a small, community-led program serving meals at two schools in Malawi has grown into a global program providing nutritious daily meals to children in thousands of places of education across 16 countries, thanks to the generosity of supporters and volunteers who share our belief that no child in this world of plenty should have to suffer hunger or miss out on an education.”