Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow: How a daily meal can break the poverty cycle

Published on 16/03/2011 17:44

Mary's Meals was born in 2002 in Malawi at a school in a village called Chilomoni in an effort to try and break that cycle of poverty.

Almost immediately when we began that model - providing a daily meal in a place of education - children started coming to school who hadn't been before. They could see this was going to work.

Based on that model it's grown from there. We've repeated that model over and over again and today we're feeding about 420,000 children every day in primary schools across Malawi - over 14 per cent of the primary school population in Malawi.

The Scotland Malawi partnership has been a tremendous success and a good way of focusing Scotland's efforts, especially given the strong historical links.

I was talking to some pupils from Glasgow the other day about their experience of going to Malawi and helping build classrooms there.

You have a huge number of young Scots who now have a personal experience of Malawi and a great knowledge of who are keeping these initiatives alive.

My belief is that it's those young people as they grow up, having benefited from an education, that will solve the problems facing Malawi. They are the ones that are going to lift Malawi out of poverty.

• Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow is the founder of aid organisation Mary's Meals.