Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow is the chief executive of Mary’s Meals. He reflects on his visit to Abu Dhabi where he was touched by the people helping provide daily meals for children in some of the world’s poorest communities.
I was talking on the phone and got distracted. It hadn’t crossed my mind that the lady sitting at the table opposite me in the Dubai coffee shop was the person I had arranged to meet here.
Then I noticed that one of the two small girls with her was wearing a T-shirt with Mary’s Meals written on it and at that same moment she heard my Scottish accent and extended her hand with a smile.
‘I’m Catherine. I thought I’d recognise you from the CNN thing,’ she said ‘but it was in black and white’. While I tried to figure that one out, the girls gave me a whistle stop tour of the of Ibn Battuta shopping mall, before taking me to St Joseph’s Parish, Abu Dhabi, where incredible amounts of money has been raised for Mary’s Meals.
A Mary's Meals Fundraising event
This all came about a few years ago when a smiling, elderly Indian nun called Sr Liguori came to a retreat at Craig Lodge in Dalmally. When she returned to her work in the United Arab Emirates she took Mary’s Meals with her.
Despite the fact she subsequently moved back to her homeland, St Joseph’s Parish, continues to donate money on a regular basis. Now, at last, I was going to have the opportunity to meet and thank the people responsible.
The chance to do this arose because I’d been invited (on all expenses paid basis) to a conference called Education Without Borders in Dubai where university students and leaders in the field of education gathered from 120 different countries.
I don’t know how many Mary’s Meals might have been bought for the cost of organising the whole conference, but I admit to making various mental calculations relating to that subject.
Despite feeling rather inadequate and nervous in the company of high achieving academics and leaders in the field of education, I met some lovely new friends, and after giving a talk about Marys Meals to the whole conference on the last morning, a number of students from places including Pakistan, Australia, Uganda and Sri Lanka, approached me to find out more.
A Malawian girl, now studying in Zambia, became tearful because she had experienced so many of the things I had mentioned in my talk.
Anyway, my duties at the conference over, I found myself arriving in Abu Dhabi just in time for an evening mid week Mass which was held outside because there was no room inside the church for the 1,500 people who had turned up – mainly immigrants from India, Philippines and Africa. While they sang the opening hymn with great feeling, the call to prayer from a local mosque echoed beautifully from a loud speaker.
At the end of Mass I was able to thank the congregation who applauded warmly when they heard that Mary’s Meals is now feeding more than 500,000 children every day.
It was extremely moving to meet these people and learning that the sizeable donations from Abu Dhabi are gifts from hard working people who have had to leave their homelands to find jobs.
I learnt later that most of the fundraising is actually being done by the children of the parish who participate in various initiatives such as collecting coins in bottles during lent.
The desire of this group is to now find ways to bring Mary’s Meals to many others in the Gulf and especially to find ways to invite their Muslim brothers and sisters join them in this mission.
