The need for Mary's Meals in Liberia

Every morning Father Garry performs the same solemn ritual. He takes the short walk from his home, past his vegetable garden and through the gate leading to a small clearing in woodland. To the left there is a large marble cross. He walks over to it and cleans it.

“This is a memorial to 300 starving children, who couldn't make it in 1996,” he explains. “They died of severe malnutrition, along with 20 or so vulnerable adults. This land, to me, is the most important spot on our mission and we keep the place clean and tidy.”

Father Garry witnessed many atrocities during the wars and was himself captured and held by rebel soldiers for several months, but it was the death of these 300 children that still haunts him the most and why he was determined to prevent it happening again.

Appalled by the widespread suffering, he contacted Magnus for help. At that time Mary’s Meals was known as Scottish International Relief and it provided food, medicine and other aid to the country.

“It was a very big project,” he recalls. “There were probably 60 to 80,000 people in IDP [internally displaced people] camps from Cape Mount, Bomi, Bopol. The Scottish International Relief, they 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. And that was the beginning.” 

The beginning of Mary’s Meals in Liberia

The civil wars left a devasting mark on Liberia. More than a quarter of a million people were killed and a further 1.3 million were displaced. The country’s utilities, roads, businesses, schools and homes were destroyed. However, Father Garry was determined to reopen St Dominic’s, to provide a safe place for hundreds of young people, including those from displaced camps and former child soldiers. He knew that school meals were essential to encourage them into the classroom and contacted several agencies for support but was told it would take months.

“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 IDP camps whose homes have been ruined. I just need food.’

“I phoned my friend Magnus, and he said, ‘Father, go to Monrovia, buy some rice and I’ll reimburse you.’ So that’s how it started.”

The value of education

Mary’s Meals Liberia formally started in 2006, marking a shift from the emergency relief provided by SIR, to establishing a long-term school feeding programme to support the country's recovery. Paula Nawrocki, Country Director for Liberia, explains that families were struggling to survive and many children were forced to beg or sell whatever they could to help provide for their households.

“Most schools had been closed for years, and basically a lot of these children were losing their childhood. When schools were closed, they didn't even have a safe place to play and to learn.

“One important thing to say is that the parents and the guardians at that time, if you asked them, ‘what are your key priorities of all these needs you have?’, you would think, water, food, shelter, but education was high on their list because they said they want the life for their children to be better than the lives that they have.”
 

Reaching more children with a daily school meal

Whilst Liberia has made progress over the past 20 years, the effects of the war are still being felt, with 51 per cent of its estimated 4.5 million people living in poverty, and in terms of global hunger, Liberia ranks 112th out of 123 countries, with a "serious" hunger level. Education remains fragile, with one of the highest levels of children out of school globally, and a lack of qualified teachers.

Given these challenges, Mary’s Meals has remained committed to Liberia and is now reaching more than 95,000 children across five counties. There is a focus on supporting communities to become sustainable, with around half of the food sourced locally, and a priority on rural schools, which are less likely to receive government support. Whilst their remoteness can make them difficult to access, Paula stresses: “These are the most vulnerable populations. They are the key, the ones that we want to reach, to be able to do the greatest impact.

“It is not just about helping them in terms of the nutrition and the health benefits by receiving the meals. Up to about 75% of household income for middle- and lower-income families is spent on foods. By us providing that one meal at school, we're reducing that financial burden on the family.”

Sona Traore Sesay from the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Liberia believes that the school feeding programme is instrumental to both the ongoing development of education and young people in Liberia.

“It's a strategy to retain students and enrol them in schools and keep them there.

“Students are able to come to school because they know they’ll have that one meal a day. As we know, when you nourish a child's body, you nourish not just their bodies, you nourish their minds and you invest in their future to be healthy individuals for tomorrow. For me, that's how that meal goes beyond just a meal for a child that we feed together with Mary’s Meals.”

Mary’s Meals is supporting generational change in Liberia. As communities continue to navigate the long-term effects of war, deadly disease outbreaks, and persistent food insecurity, nutritious daily meals are helping children and their families build themselves a better future. The last 20 years of school feeding has transformed so many lives – let’s not stop there.