How People's Postcode Lottery players helped us reach a £7 million milestone

Generous players of People’s Postcode Lottery in the UK have helped raise more than £7 million for Mary’s Meals, supporting our transformational work to encourage hungry children into the classroom and help them build a brighter future through education. 

The decade-long partnership between People’s Postcode Lottery and Mary’s Meals has achieved remarkable success. Thanks to players, 478,968 children now receive nutritious meals every school day, with more than 39 million meals served to date in 16 countries around the world through this support.  

Laura Chow, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery, says: “This funding helps children in some of the most underserved communities go to school well fed, ready to learn and full of hope for a brighter future.” 

During the first seven years of the partnership, funding from People’s Postcode Lottery players played a key role in supporting Mary’s Meals’ work across countries like Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Zambia, Madagascar, Ethiopia and South Sudan, as well as strengthening our organisation through key organisational development projects.  

More recently, funding has been provided on an unrestricted basis, enabling Mary’s Meals to direct resources where they are needed most across all 16 countries where we operate. 

Our school feeding programme addresses a variety of challenges, including educational barriers and gender inequality. Girls account for 50% of the children benefiting from Mary’s Meals, yet with 119 million girls still out of school worldwide, ensuring access to education remains a vital step in breaking the cycle of poverty. 

For 12-year-old Efigénia who attends Tindzawene Primary School in Mozambique, the promise of a daily school meal is a source of hope in challenging times. She says: “With school meals, I feel good because even with a lack of food at home, here at school I have a meal and I can study.”  

Over the past ten years, players across the UK have helped support significant milestones in our journey, from feeding one million children in 2015, to the expansion of school feeding programmes in Tigray, Ethiopia and Syria in 2017, and the launch of a new programme in Mozambique in 2024. 

At the end of last year, we reached a major milestone of serving daily school meals to more than three million children worldwide. This achievement was driven by programme expansions in the first half of 2025, which saw 462,000 additional children across Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, South Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe benefit from the school feeding programme. Such progress would not have been possible without the vital support of People’s Postcode Lottery players, whose contributions continue to fuel the charity’s growth. 

Gemma Love, Philanthropy and Institutional Partnerships Manager, says: “We are incredibly grateful to People’s Postcode Lottery players, whose ongoing support is helping us reach more children than ever before with a daily school meal that encourages learning, brings hope and changes lives."

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