2024 at Mary’s Meals: urgency, generosity, and love

I started working for Mary’s Meals in early 2024. A few days before I started, Mary’s Meals gathered all its staff for a briefing on a devastating hunger crisis unfolding in northern Ethiopia. I watched it back during my first week at work and it has stayed with me; the stories speak of a suffering so deep it is impossible to imagine.

Looking back, it seems to me that this has been a year of increasing urgency. Crisis after crisis has unfolded around the world, and many of them have hit countries where Mary’s Meals works to deliver daily school meals to children, with the aim of helping them to access and benefit from an education. I am a Supporter Engagement Officer, working with supporters and volunteers in the UK and not directly involved with programme delivery, but working here has given me a window I don’t usually have into some of the things happening around the world.

As I’ve begun to learn how my particular role here works, I’ve also had a front row seat to both the depth of need around the world and the astounding generosity of those choosing to give.

Mary’s Meals began, really, with a family throwing open the doors of their old shed to receive donations from neighbours. Suddenly, they found themselves stewarding an ongoing flow of support to provide relief to individuals and communities in dire need in Bosnia, Liberia, Romania and around the world. This movement, which later transformed into Mary’s Meals, is still funded in large part through local, grassroots support and is only made possible by the work of a large number of dedicated, passionate volunteers. The shed remains our international headquarters.

In 2024, I’ve got to work with our incredible volunteers, share our story with supporters and be a small part of that movement. I’ve met volunteers running a pop-up shop with local crafts, and chatted to another who helps to hold monthly baked potato lunches in her church hall. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit primary schools and see pupils taking what they’ve learned and running with it to raise money in all kinds of creative ways so that other children can have a chance to eat. The level of dedication and of generosity with time, money and resources is inspiring.

At this time of year, we think particularly about the humility of Jesus who, “though He was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men…” (Philippians 2:6-7, ESV).

I think that this year, as I have worked with those at Mary’s Meals, my roots have gone down deeper into the truth that there is not one single dark crisis or seemingly hopeless situation where we will not find Him, the one born to be a Light, already there ahead of us.

In Emmline and her colleagues at our partner organisation in Haiti, who with endurance and determination continue to deliver school meals for children despite unthinkable turmoil and gang violence, I see the Light, the person of Jesus, there in the midst of darkness.

In Ann, who for many years has been working in quiet determination to visit churches around the country, sharing our story so that others might hear about the need and the opportunity to be involved… In Bethlehem and Amlak, two young girls in Ethiopia who, when other children came to beg for food at the gate of their school, freely shared their own much-needed Mary’s Meals – in all these and many, countless others, I see Him, the Light.

The joyful result of the Crisis in Ethiopia appeal is that we are now able to provide more than 110,000 children in Tigray, northern Ethiopia with a school meal every day. It’s been an astonishing outpouring of generosity, allowing us to expand to feed more than four times the number of children we were feeding in January.

For a limited time only, all donations made to Mary’s Meals will be doubled by a group of generous supporters, up to £1.1 million. Visit marysmeals.org.uk/double to find out more.