We caught up with Mary’s Meals for an update on our 2023 Helping Hand Appeal – and a new emergency
WORDS: SCOTT PATERSON
Last Christmas, My Weekly once again supported the work at Mary’s Meals during the Helping Hand Appeal with a series of articles about their programme feeding hungry children a nutritious daily school meal in India.
Readers responded to the Helping Hand Appeal with enormous generosity, raising £24,000, which during the appeal’s Double The Love initiative was doubled by generous donors to a whopping £48,000!
Mary’s Meals would like to thank every My Weekly reader who read about their work, shared their story and donated during the Helping Hand Appeal. Year after year, support for Mary’s Meals enables them to reach the next hungry child.
Crisis In Ethiopia
A combination of drought, displacement and brutal conflict has left huge areas of Ethiopia in crisis.
The Tigray region, where Mary’s Meals works, is one of the worst affected.
The war has undone years of progress in Tigray’s education system and millions of children are now facing emergency levels of food insecurity and hunger.
For now, there is an urgent dual priority – ensuring that children in Tigray have food and boosting their chances of engaging with education again.
Mary’s Meals is working with their partner in Tigray to extend the programme to more schools. We will work together to reach as many children as possible over the coming months.
Shona Shea, senior content manager at Mary’s Meals, wrote about her recent visit to Tigray.
“On my way back from Ethiopia, I sat on the plane typing furiously. I should have been trying to sleep, especially as I’d be straight back to mum duties with my six and two year olds.
“Maybe it was my way of processing some of the horrors I’d just seen.
“I sat with mothers who are terrified of the months ahead and how they will feed their children, fathers who cried about what the war has done to their family and how they have lost all hope, and children who just looked at me and couldn’t say anything at all.
“It’s often little moments , in the weeks since I came home, that have caused me to pause and think of the children I met.
“Buttering a slice of toast and knowing that it’s more than Mahlet or Lewte will get all day. Marvelling that Selemon has any energy or motivation at all to get up and make his way to school – doing so in the face of such hung
