11 November 2011

Mary’s Meals and the Backpack Project

Update from WildFox Fiona on a field visit to Malawi to see a Mary’s Meals backpack project in action. 

The first two days visiting Mary’s Meals projects left me extremely impressed with the charity and work they do in Malawi.  The school feeding programme makes a huge difference in the lives of the 500,000 children they feed each day.  Money raised from the Quad ensures an extra 8,000 children at five different schools are being fed. 

While Mary’s Meals main priority is the feeding of school children, they also run a Backpack Project in conjunction with the feeding.  The Backpack Project appeals to schools, clubs and businesses in the Western world to fill backpacks with basic educational materials to send to children receiving Mary’s Meals.  Research shows that basic education is the single most effective way of escaping the poverty trap, and the Backpack Project provides basic school items enabling children to attend school and learn. Essentially, Mary’s Meals and the Backpack Project are proving to be a simple solution to world hunger. 

On our third day in Malawi we had the opportunity to visit the warehouse where the bags are sorted and then had the honour of helping deliver backpacks to a local school.  No one at the school, teachers or pupils, had any idea we were coming along with a truckload of backpacks.  They all looked at us with intense curiosity as we pulled up and it was only once the whole school had assembled outside that one of the team from Mary’s Meals explained what we were doing there.

I have never seen such looks of pure delight on the faces of children before.  Upon being told that they were to receive a backpack filled with goodies (paper, pens, clothes, soap, towel, toothbrush/paste etc) there were cheers, whoops, fists punched in the air in delight and sea of grinning faces.  A sight I will always remember. 

The children were asked to hold up their bags to show us what they were currently using to carry their things.  Many merely held up the objects as they did not have bags, others held up plastic bags riddled with holes and a few had satchels.  The Backpack Project was about to change all that for these children and we were honoured to be a part of it.

The team from WFE and Artemis helped carry the heavy sacks holding countless bags to the classrooms and deposited them in front of some very attentive and excited children.  The children were given instructions to collect a backpack before taking it back to their seat unopened.  Once all the children in the room had a bag we all counted to three and they were then allowed to look inside. 

We looked on in delight as the children opened their bags to see what goodies they contained.  Watching one little boy get so excited over a bar of soap brought tears to my eyes.  It’s beautiful to see happiness stem from such a small gift but made me wish there was more I could do to help.  Being involved with the backpack distribution certainly left us all feeling committed to raising even more funds through the Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon for Mary’s Meals. 

The children were all so excited that there was no chance of them continuing with their lessons so they were sent home to enjoy the afternoon.  We watched them all walk off with huge grins on their faces carrying their full backpacks. 

To date Mary’s Meals have given out 245,000 backpacks and are fast closing in on the 250,000 mark.  If you’d like to learn more or get involved visit www.marysmeals.org.uk/what-you-can-do/backpack-project/.