A brighter future for a father and son in Liberia

As a little boy growing up during Liberia’s civil war, Sylvester learned things no child should ever know. He learned to crawl rather than walk upright when bullets were flying. To sleep sitting up, ready to escape. And to live with the hunger that 
came from going without food, sometimes for weeks on end. 

These were Sylvester’s first lessons in life. Thankfully the war is over now, but for many children in Liberia, hunger is not. When there isn’t enough food at home, children arrive at school hungry – if they make it there at all. And as Sylvester 
knows only too well, it’s almost impossible to concentrate when all you can think about is your next meal.

Will you donate today and help feed a child this Christmas?

Mary’s Meals serves nutritious meals to more than 95,000 children in Liberia every school day. But there’s a very important reason why giving a gift to Mary’s Meals this Christmas is especially powerful. A group of generous donors is matching gifts up  to a value of £700,000 this festive season – so everything you give will be doubled – and your kindness will go twice as far.

When I met Sylvester in Liberia, he was a proud father, raising a son of his own. But his childhood had been very different. He told me about the day rebels took his father during the civil war. They tied him up and beat him when he refused to leave his children behind. Sylvester thought he had lost him. His father survived, and the words he later gave his son have stayed with him ever since: “I don’t want you to be like me. I want you to be more than me.” 

When the family fled the fighting, they eventually found safety in a camp for displaced people. But safety did not mean an end to hunger. There were times when the family had almost nothing to eat. Sylvester remembers his mother filtering swamp water through sand so they had something safe enough to drink.

This was the childhood his father desperately wanted him to escape. For Sylvester everything changed when he started receiving Mary’s Meals at school. 

After experiencing such desperate hunger, knowing there would be a meal waiting for him gave Sylvester another reason to keep turning up, day after day. That simple school meal gave him much-needed nourishment, but it also helped him learn. To look beyond survival and to begin imagining a future.

Sylvester went on to college and graduated. Today, he works at Bomi Community College. It’s an extraordinary journey for a boy who once had to crawl to avoid gunfire and sleep sitting up, ready to run.

Today, Sylvester has a son, five-year-old Jallah, and he receives Mary’s Meals at school too. Thanks to the generous support of people like you, Jallah can attend school and has the energy to learn and look towards a future of opportunities.

That’s the extraordinary power of a school meal. Its impact can begin with one child, on one school day – and ripple through families, communities and generations. And this Christmas, thanks to a group of generous donors, donations will be doubled, up to £700,000.

This year we celebrate twenty years of meals in Liberia – twenty years of changing the lives of people like Sylvester and his son, Jallah. But hunger and poverty are still part of daily life for far too many families. Yet something else is happening too. I saw it for myself.

After the meals were served, the schools I visited suddenly came alive. I heard children laughing and talking as they ate together. Afterwards, they had energy to run around and play. For a little while, they were simply children being children. And I couldn’t help thinking about what that might mean for Jallah’s generation.

A daily meal at school gives families like Sylvester’s hope for what this next generation might achieve. Before I left Sylvester and his family, I watched him sitting beside Jallah, helping him with his homework.

After everything he had told me, that’s the Sylvester I remember most. A loving dad, helping his son learn. Hoping, just as his own father did, that his child can have something more.

This Christmas, will you donate today and help give that same hope to more chidren like Jallah?

Sylvester is clear about what he wants for the next generation: “We need to look after them the proper way, school them and make sure they get the proper education they need.”

Together, across the Mary’s Meals family, we hope to raise enough money to provide 25 million meals this Christmas.

So, while donations are doubled, and your generosity can go twice as far, please send a gift today. 

Thank you for everything you do for children like Sylvester and Jallah. Because your support means so much more than food here and now. It means the chance for the children of Liberia to grow and hope for a better future.

With warmest wishes,
Steph Bungy, Content Manager