“”When I think of Mary’s Meals I think of it as a series of lots and lots of little acts of love. I’ve learned that every small act of kindness does make a difference.” –Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow
Every week I sit down to write an Inspiration Information post and the strangest thing happens. Sometimes I’ve received a tip from a fellow superforester or friend and the story just itches to pour itself onto the page. Other times I have a backlog of inspiring stories which I have to sort through and determine the runway lineup of precedence… when really I just want to write about them all equally and simultaneously.
But for the most part, thursdays roll around and I wake up without the slightest hint as to who or what I will highlight. And every time, without fail, the moment I sit down to write, a story finds me. Whether it be through the morning news, the opening of a book I’ve been meaning to read but put off, a snatch of NPR while running an errand in my car… somehow I am never wanting for inspiration.
And usually, these random stories that find me are the most timely, perfect manifestations of the themes and feelings I wish most to express. Such it is that today, after a long week of news fasting, I open CNN and find one of the most uplifting and empowering tales I’ve thus far encountered.
Meet Magnus and Fergus MacFarlane-Barrow — a pair of small-town Scottish salmon fishermen who one day decided to do a small act of charity and ended up creating one of the largest growing and most successful anti-hunger non-profits in the world.
The year was 1992. Magnus (25) and Fergus (27) MacFarlane-Barrow were sitting in their local pub, nursing pints as was their usual routine, when news images flashed on the tv of refugees suffering in war-torn Bosnia. As young teenagers, the brothers had made a life-changing spiritual trip to Bosnia, the supposed birth place of the Virgin Mary (both brothers are devout catholics), were theu fell in love with the beauty of the country and its people. Now over a decade later, they sat thunderstruck in their tiny town bar watching the devastation half-a-world away. The idea hit them all at once, in the same way many a genius drunken thought is born (and as quickly forgotten). Only this idea stayed and grew long after the night’s hangover burned away.
Taking a week off from work, the brother’s purchased an old Jeep Landrover and filled it to the brim with as much food, clothes, and medicine as they could gather. Some was donated. Most was purchased with their own meager salaries. And the two young Scotsmen then drove all the way from their local village cross-country to Bosnia, where they hand-delivered the supplies to the desperately appreciative refugees. Mission accomplished.
Only when they returned to Scotland, they found their family home overloaded with an avalanche of goods that the local community had donated while they were away. The brothers were floored. ”I was touched by the overwhelming generosity of others,” MacFarlane-Barrow remembers. “I saw all of those donations in our family home and thought, ‘Wow, people really are good,’ and it inspired me to be good too.”
What began as a humble mission to lend relief in whatever small way possible, turned into a lifelong calling. The brothers loaded the Land Rover back up with the new supplies and drove right back to Bosnia, the second of over 22 such missions during the Bosnian War. The donations never stopped coming, so neither did Magnus who went on to quit his fisherman job, sell his family home and dedicate himself full-on to serving others. Over the last 18 years his missions expanded to over 80 in countries worldwide.
Today, his charity work has spawned Mary’s Meals — an international organization that provides free daily meals to over 400,000 children in 15 countries. Like all of the MacFarlane-Barrow grand projects, it too began from a very basic idea. In 2002, Magnus was working in Malawi — a country racked by famine and AIDS — when he met Edward, the eldest son of six children crouching around their dying mother on the mud floor of their feeble house. Edward told Magnus that his twin ambitions in life were to have enough food to eat, and to attend school one day.
Mary’s meals works off the simple premise that by providing free meals in poverty-stricken countries, students are motivated to enroll in school. But the outcome of the organization is much more profound. Not only do more students attend school in a consistent basis, they focus and excel in their studies. All it takes is as little as £6.15 (or $9.6) to feed a single child for a year. And this small amount, the elimination of hunger in children at school, has already transformed entire communities in Malawi, India, Liberia, Sudan, and Haiti.
Today there are over 500 schools serving Mary’s Meals and the organization is growing exponentially (nearly 40% every year). “I see the children’s faces as they eat their meal, ” Magnus remarked. “Knowing I can transform their lives keeps me motivated.” People often ask Magnus if he finds his work depressing. But to him it’s just the opposite: “I feel uplifted and encouraged. I am really humbled by what people in poor communities are doing each day to make life better; by their determination and optimism. If they are not despairing, why should I be?”
To top it all off, Mary’s Meals has branched into other high-profile projects like the Backpack Project, which encourages school children to donate their old school backpacks and fill them with school materials such as notebooks, pencils, flip-flops and T-shirts, to send to children in countries such as Liberia, Uganda and Malawi.
And it all started so small. From buying a used, beat-up Land Rover. To upgrading his trucker’s license so he could transport larger cargoes of aid. To launching a global campaign combating chronic hunger in schoolchildren. Funnily, along the way Magnus meet and fell in love with Julie — a young nurse who wanted to hitch a ride on one of his Missions so she could tend to war-victims… and who ended up being a much better truck driver than Magnus. He had six children. And yet through it all Magnus has remained the humble Scottish Highlander who first decided over a pint of Lager that he wanted to do something positive in the world. He’s never left his little village. He still runs the entire 10,000 volunteer operation from his father’s corrugated tin shed on the family lot where he grew up.
To me this is a fairytale of the highest order. An ordinary man of modest origins who traded all his earthly belongings for the magic bean promise of helping others in need. Who then plants those seeds with love in the war torn soil of Bosnia and watches a giant beanstalk of kindness grow up into the clouds. And who then climbs higher and higher until he discovers a golden egg of goodness, an idea for change so effective, which Magnus brings back to earth to help others live happily ever after. It is a hero’s journey so beautiful and pure… I am left with a glowing sense of affirmation and inspiration that anyone who dreams big but starts small, can raise humanity inch by inch to higher ground.
Such is the fable of Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow — A simple fisherman who fed the world.
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