20 years in Liberia

Father Garry Jenkins – a priest from England who had established a school in Liberia – needed help. As a result of a brutal civil war, hundreds of young people, among them former child soldiers and children from camps for displaced families, needed a safe place to learn. They also needed to eat. When he asked aid agencies for help, he was told it would take months. 

He remembers: "I said 'I'm sorry, I've got no time for process. There are kids who have had their guns taken off them and children from Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps whose homes have been ruined. I just need food.'" 

So, he phoned his friend Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who is today founder of Mary's Meals. "He said, 'Father, go to Monrovia, buy some rice and I'll reimburse you.' So that's how it started." 

Fast forward to today and our work in Liberia has provided more than 260 million school meals. Today, more than 95,000 children in Liberia receive Mary's Meals every school day, thanks to supporters across the UK. 

From Scotland, with love 

Our roots in Liberia go back further than school meals. Mary’s Meals started out as Scottish International Relief, which provided emergency aid during the conflict, before Mary's Meals introduced its school feeding programme in Liberia in 2006. 

Father Garry, a priest from Aldershot in south-east England, had lived in Liberia since 1973. He founded St Dominic's Catholic School and a church there. Appalled by the suffering around him, he contacted Magnus for help. 

He says: "Scottish International Relief sent the first two containers out with 'From Scotland, With Love' written on the outside of the containers and it meant a lot to us. That was the beginning." 

And since those first two containers, as a UK charity working in Liberia, we've been helping Liberia for more than three decades.

Schools in Liberia offered a safe place to learn during the war 

Mother Mariama Brown set up Mother Tegeste Stewart Pentecostal Mission School during the civil war. She believed that even in conflict, children deserved somewhere safe to learn. 

She explains: "You had children, people taking them and recruiting them as child soldiers, so it helped a lot because you will put the children together in a school, you are talking to them, you are counselling them." 

Many of the children arriving at schools in Liberia were severely malnourished. Mother Mariama remembers the day the meals arrived: "The scale of hunger was huge. You had children really malnourished. Then Mary's Meals came in, students and teachers, everybody started yelling, rejoicing. You got something in your stomach and after eating, it's a different game. I think it is one of the huge impacts within a 20-year period." 

Today, children at her school still eat a nutritious meal every school day. 

Mary’s Meals Founder, Magnus, says: "I am astonished and proud to see the fruits of our long-standing partnership here, where the simple provision of school meals has, in its own way, created wonderful opportunities for the generation that first benefited from Mary's Meals all those years ago." 

Poverty in Liberia today 

Yet the need for Mary’s Meals hasn't gone away in Liberia. Communities are still living with the long-term effects of war, deadly disease outbreaks and persistent food insecurity: 

• More than half of Liberia's people live in poverty[1] 
• Liberia ranks 112th of 123 countries[2] on the 2026 Global Hunger Index, with a "serious" level of hunger 
• Liberia has one of the highest rates of children out of school globally, and a shortage of qualified teachers 

With a poverty rate above 50%, Liberia is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and one of the places where child hunger is most serious. 

Mother Mariama says: "The suffering of the Liberian people, you will notice they are still hungry, still begging in the street. The children need to still get food to eat. Mary's Meals has been here for 20 years and it's our wish that they remain until things can really normalise. It is still needed because suffering in Liberia is not over yet." 

Just £19.15 feeds a hungry child with Mary's Meals for a whole year.

Why our work in Africa continues 

Our approach is simple: a good meal, every school day, in a place of education. Local volunteers cook and serve the meals, so communities are at the heart of everything we do. 

For Magnus, Liberia will always be special. He says: "Liberia has a special place in my heart because it was the first country in Africa we worked in and we've been partnering with communities there for a long time, through the aftermath of the civil war and the suffering that caused. 

"Our work in Liberia proves that something better is possible. Long may it continue, in Liberia and elsewhere, onwards to the next child." 

Help to write the next chapter 

It costs just £19.15 to feed a hungry child for a whole year with Mary's Meals in Liberia or the 15 other countries where we run school feeding programmes. A charitable gift of any size can set a child up for life, and their success is the true legacy of your gift.

[1] WFP, Hunger Map 2025  

[2] 2026 Global Hunger Index