£7 feeds a child for a year
People are always surprised by how little it costs to provide a child with Mary’s Meals for a year in Malawi – £7 per child in Malawi and an average £10.70 per child globally.
How do we keep our costs so low?
Buying Food Locally
Wherever possible we purchase locally produced food for use in the meals we serve in schools. This supports the local economy, it respects local culture and food preferences, and it avoids incurring extra transport costs. In Malawi, we serve Likuni Phala, a nutritious white maize porridge fortified with vitamins.
Local Community Contribution
Mary’s Meals projects work in partnership with local communities. In Liberia the communities build the simple kitchens needed to cook Mary’s Meals at a school. In Malawi over 60,000 volunteers, usually parents, cook and serve over 500,000 meals every school day. They draw up rotas, manage the stores, look after the cooking stoves, and make the idea of Mary’s Meals a reality. They are willing to volunteer their services in this way because they understand better than anyone how important the daily meal is to their children.
Commitment to Good Stewardship
We have made a commitment to spend at least 93p of every £1 you donate on our charitable work. In other words, we are very careful to keep our running costs as low as we can. We do this by welcoming volunteers into every aspect of the organisation, by encouraging donations in kind of goods and services (e.g. new office furniture), and not wasting money on anything that is not absolutely necessary.
