Scottish Catholic Observer

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow visited the young people of St Mary’s Kenmure Secure Unit in Bishopbriggs on Monday to thank them for their support for the charity.

Mary’s Meals hit the headlines most recently thanks to Lochgilphead schoolgirl Martha Payne, whose online lunchtime blog has resulted in the Scottish charity being able to feed thousands of extra schoolchildren in Malawi. In addition to paying tribute to Martha, Mr MacFarlane-Barrow was also keen to highlight the efforts of young people at St Mary’s in Glasgow Archdiocese, run by the Cora Foundation supported by the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland.

During the project at St Mary’s Kenmure, in addition to the lessons learned and citizenship being displayed, more than 100 bags of textiles have been collected and passed on to Mary’s Meals for processing.

St Mary’s efforts

Over the past year, the students at St Mary’s have supported Mary’s Meals in a variety of ways.

St Mary’s fundraising initiative was started after one of the school’s teachers, Tracy McDonald, met Duncan Bannatyne, the entrepreneur and star of the television show, Dragon’s Den, who promoted the charity to Ms McDonald as an excellent way of teaching young people about enterprise and social responsibility.

Around 100 children in developing countries have been fed and educated for more than a year thanks to the efforts of the young people of St Mary’s, many of whom previously may not have had the most positive start to their own lives.

“Duncan Bannatyne had been a long term supporter of Mary’s Meals, and when I met him, he promoted Mary’s Meals as an ideal opportunity to introduce the young people to enterprise activities in support of the Curriculum for Excellence,” Ms McDonald said. “The change in some of the young people has been amazing. Many of the young people initially were reluctant to become involved, and did not show a lot of interest or compassion in the project. But as the results began to become evident and the targets began to be met they began to understand how such an apparently small project could make such a major difference to such a large group of young people.”

Some young people from St Mary’s make contributions to Mary’s Meals from their limited pocket money, while others have donated and arranged donations of clothes and have organised textile collection for sale for recycling. Following last year’s World Porridge Day event, the young people had the idea of a monthly porridge day to raise funds for the needy, with youngsters paying 50 pence for a plate of porridge. The young people encourage the staff to pay more than their minimum charge of £1.

“What I really like is that the Mary’s Meals campaign never tries to get you to do something by making you feel guilty,” one of the youngsters from St Mary’s said. “I like the way all of the pictures from Mary’s Meals make you feel good. The children are always smiling.”

Inspiration

Ms McDonald shared some more reactions from St Mary’s pupils focused on their charity campaign.

“One girl from the unit, watching a video of children in Africa receiving backpacks said: ‘She looks like she has never been given anything nice in her life. What else can we do?’” Ms McDonald said. “This sort of reaction is representative of the way that the project has encouraged young people to think of enterprising ways of raising money for Mary’s Meals and seeing the impact they can have on the lives of poor children far away.

“One boy, when he was introduced to the concept of raising money for starving children, made it clear that he was disinterested and appeared resentful. He was very reluctant to participate and made his opinions very clear. However, over the duration of the project he began to ask more questions and has now spent his own money on auctions, raffles and porridge and is now helping me to deliver dozens of bags to the Mary’s Meals charity shop on a monthly basis. He is now proud to admit that it makes him feel good and it has been a pleasure to work with him on the textile project.

“This is not an isolated reaction to the Mary’s Meals project, perhaps for the first time; some of our young people can understand values they have never recognised before such as compassion, patience, and enthusiasm which are also fundamental to the principles of the Curriculum for Excellence.”

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PIC: PAUL McSHERRY