By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow is adamant about feeding children — and he’s coming to Thomas More University on September 11 to talk about his life’s mission.
“There is no reason for children to go hungry,” he said. “We travel all over to try and raise enough money to be able to keep our promise to the children we are already committed to, but at the same time be able to help the next child waiting to have some food to eat.”
His organization, Mary’s Meals, provides one meal a day for three million children at their schools in some of the most abjectly poor areas of the world. These meals are served in over 5,800 schools in 16 different countries.
Unfortunately, those areas are also places where there is political unrest, or war, and the victims are usually the children. That makes Mary’s Meals even more important in their quest to feed hungry children.
He did say that even in those places, they try to keep the schools open.
“It is not adequate schooling, but at the end of the day, if they can learn to read and write, that helps the child’s chances of surviving,” he explained. “When we go into an area, we always contact the groups that are already there, and we work with them and through them. We can provide food for one meal a day at their school. Sometimes that is the difference between life and death.”
MacFarlane-Barrow will speak at 7 p.m. at Thomas More University of September 11. The event is free and open to the public.
“When I was younger, I was the last person you would expect to step out in front of people and speak,” he said with a chuckle. “But my progress was gradual, and I would learn unexpected things when I would come out of myself. Now I look forward to speaking to people.”
He is a motivational speaker, and he motivates people because they are able to hear his passion in his voice.
He and his family are from Scotland. When he was 15, the family took a trip to the Marian shrine of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that made such an impression on the boy, that when he returned home to Scotland, he asked his dad if he could use their shed to organize donations that he and his brother Fergus collected from people in the area.
“I borrowed the shed, and I have never given it back,” he said, laughing. “It is still our headquarters. But my entire family believes 100 percent in what we are doing.”
The brothers took a week’s leave from their jobs, and drove the donations across Europe and distributed them in Bosnia in 1992. Magnus was working as a fisherman on a salmon farm, and he never went back to that job because people kept giving to their cause and driving the donations to where they needed to go kept him busy. Their first organization was called Scottish International Relief.
In 2002, he took an aid trip to Malawi in Southeast Africa and met a young man named Edward, who was the oldest of six children, and whose mother was dying of AIDS. When questioned, Edward said that his greatest wish was to have enough food to eat and to go to school.
That inspired Magnus to found Mary’s Meals, a name born of his lifelong dedication to the Virgin Mary.
“We dedicated Mary’s Meals to Mary, and asked God to show us how to help,” Magnus said. “We have people of all faiths involved in our mission, because all people want to help feed hungry children.”
Mary’s Meals links food to schools in a simple method of attempting to create some order where there is none, and a way to feed the body and the mind.
He met his wife during the early years of the mission, and together they have seven children and two grandchildren. Except for the babies, the whole family is involved with this mission in some way.
“Feeding children at school is a way to break the cycle of poverty,” he explained. “It only takes $25.20 to feed a child at school for a year. That’s not a day — that’s a year..”
He would love for people to visit the organization’s website, and he wants everyone to come and listen to him speak on September 11 in Thomas More University’s Ziegler Auditorium when he talks about “A Heart of Service, Simple Solutions to World Hunger.”
“Help us to do God’s work, and feed the children,” MacFarlane-Barrow said.
Andrew Cole, director of TMU’s Campus Ministry agrees: “We’re trying to promote service — and demonstrate that to our students…Our number one goal is to give exposure to our mission as a university, as exemplified by Mary’s Meals.”