The Scots charity offering a route out of poverty for war-torn Liberia's kids

from the Daily Record

This is a story on the charity called Mary's Meals. This charity gives a lot lore than food to the children of Liberia. - Kale

By Samantha Booth

ORPHANED children wandering alone around city streets is not an unusual sight in Liberia.

The war-torn country is home to thousands of youngsters who have lost parents in the battles between factions who seek to gain control over the gold and diamond mines.

Many are former child soldiers who are desperately trying to adapt to life free from enslavement by the rival armies.

Some are simply lost and lonely children looking for a way to stave off starvation.

Life in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, is particularly cruel for youngsters with a disability.

One nine-year-old deaf boy was found wandering the streets in the city of Monrovia by the police.

He could not tell officers where he was from, where his family were or even his name.

But thanks to a small Scottish charity, there was somewhere for this little boy to find refuge and care.

Police took him to the newly opened Oscar Romero School for the Deaf built by Scottish International Relief (SIR) with funds donated by the Rozelle Trust in Paisley.

Here, he was given the name Joseph, a warm bed and food.

Most importantly, Joseph now receives lessons in sign language.

As well as enabling him to communicate, it will also be vital in helping him get an education - his only chance of escaping poverty.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barr, founder of Scottish International Relief, said: "Sign language opens up a whole new world for children like Joseph.

"I found it really moving to see him and the other children start to learn how to sign and begin to realise that they did actually have a way of expressing themselves.

"Just the fact they feel they are being respected enough to be given an education means a lot to them.

"It is a real revelation to them to start communicating with people and it really is incredible to see.

"Sadly, Joseph's story is typical of Liberia. There are so many children like that who have lost their parents.

"His is a very moving story but it happens so much out there it would be hard to say I was shocked."

Scottish International Relief have been working in Liberia for 11 years.

They first got involved during the civil war between 1986 and 1996, when they provided emergency aid to the millions of refugees displaced by the fighting.

To begin with all they could do was send container ships full of clothes, food and medical supplies.

Magnus visited the country for the first time in 1997, when people were attempting to move back to their homes after the worst of the fighting had ended.

SIR helped by building schools and by setting up a mobile medical unit to give primary care. In 2002, in the midst of a second bout of fighting, they took theirMary'sMeals scheme to the country.

It provides children with one meal a day in return for their attendance at school.

Magnus said: "So many of the problems and poverty we see in Liberia is due to the war - a war fuelled by diamonds and gold.

"When we first got involved in the country about half of the population were living in refugee camps.

"One of the distinctive things about the war in Liberia is the number of child soldiers there were.

A lot of the children we work with out there used to be child soldiers.

"In one school I was visiting recently 400 out of 600 pupils had fought with one army or another.

"Soldiers would go into a village, kill all of the adults then order the children to carry the loot from the village.

"From there they would be trained up to be soldiers but in the most part they were just slaves.

"Now we have a generation of children and young people who have had no education whatsoever because of the war." Magnus believes that without schooling, Liberia's people have no chance of escaping their devastating poverty.

In one of the many schools in the city of Westport, head teacher Harrison Marshall faces a daily struggle to help his pupils.

There are so many children but so few classrooms that he runs two schools in one building - one in the afternoon and one in the morning.

Tragically, many more children do not attend at all because they have to work. Countless others come to school hungry.

Teachers are paid 60 US dollars a month, enough to buy one large bag of rice.

Harrison said: "This chronic poverty is one of the things that causes families to break up.

"How can we tell our teenager daughters to behave and stay at home when we cannot feed them?

"How can you blame them if they do not respect us and go their own way?"

Each time Magnus visits Liberia to help its people he becomes ever more aware of the problems facing the country's high population of deaf children. Many were born with their disability but many more are deaf due to childhood diseases or infections - illnesses that could easily have been treated with antibiotics.

Magnus said: "In a lot of the other schools we were working in we were coming across a lot of deaf children and it soon became clear that there was no provision for them.

"Over a couple of years we could see that the deaf children would get frustrated at not being able to communicate and would end up getting into trouble. They would feel very excluded from everything and, of course, they have no way of telling anyone how they feel.

"They would also get annoyed by the way they were treated by the other kids.

"There is a huge lack of awareness about deafness and a lot of people were assuming that these children were stupid.

"So a couple of years ago we came up with the idea of starting a school for deaf children and the Oscar Romero School is the result.

"The need for it is so apparent. I was just there for a few days but in that time around 10 children were brought to the school either by parents hoping we would educate their deaf child or, like Joseph, they arrived at our door after having been abandoned or orphaned.

"I think we can accommodate 60 children but unfortunately I think we will reach that quite quickly."

To make a donation to Mary's Meals or Scottish International Relief, call 0800 698 1212 or log on to www.marysmeals.org

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Small Scottish charity could make big difference to African poverty, says Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne

from the Daily Record

By Samantha Booth

DRAGONS' Den Scot Duncan Bannatyne reckons a small Scots charity holds the key to solving African poverty.

Mary's Meals, which is run from a wooden hut in the Argyll countryside, offers children a meal a day in return for school attendance.

But the scheme has proved such a success since its inception five years ago, that they now feed more than 300,000 children around the world. And entrepreneur Duncan, who is worth more than £300million, believes it could be the answer to Africa's problems.

"Mary's Meals is one of the most fantastic things that has happened in this world for a long time," he said. "It could actually bring Africa out of poverty.

"It is such a simple concept but when I first went to Malawi to see what Mary's Meals do, I could see how well the system worked.

"Getting children fed is the most important thing, but education comes a close second.

"I knew I wanted to help in some way and as soon as I saw what the project was about, I knew that was the one for me.

"I know that the majority of the money is actually going to feed children and as an entrepreneur, I like to see the tangible evidence of where the money is going."

Dad-of-six Duncan, who has set-up his own charity called the Bannatyne Charitable Foundation through which he conduits money to Mary's Meals, supports four schools in Malawi and feeds about 20,000 children every day.

"It works so well that the problem we have is that we have too many children turning up," said Duncan. "We need bigger schools, more teachers and more food.

"When I first went to Malawi the level of poverty shocked me.

People were living in mud huts with nothing to their name. I remember one wee girl who, at just 13, cared for her two younger sisters.

"Their parents were dead and they had nothing but the clothes on their backs. But every day she walked her sisters three miles to school so they could get a meal.

"I remember thinking that if something terrible happened to them and they vanished off the face of the planet, nobody would care.

"They are the kind of people Mary's Meals makes a difference to."

Duncan now travels routinely to Malawi to see just what an impact Mary's Meals has.

And never has he been more aware of the benefits of the scheme than when he travelled there recently to make a documentary for BBC2, due to be shown next month, about how tobacco companies target young children in Africa's poorest nations.

He said: "I was horrified by what I saw. In one school I visited, more than half a class of 11 to 13-year-olds admitted to smoking.

"In Mary's Meals schools, none of the children smoke."

Duncan, who is well-known to be antismoking, was delighted to be asked to front the documentary on how the tobacco companies operate in Africa.

A leading doctor from the World Health Authority predicts that in just eight years' time, more people in Africa will die of smoking-related illnesses than of malaria. Yet tobacco companies seem to be targeting the continent's young children.

Duncan said: "It needs to be stopped. Children out there can buy cigarettes for about one pence.

"The tobacco companies say they haven't deliberately moved in, but I think that's nonsense.

"It also horrified me that the warning on the cigarette packets in Malawi is barely readable. People have no idea what tobacco does to them."

Duncan also travelled to Nigeria and Mauritius to make the documentary.

The poverty levels in Mauritius, a wellknown paradise holiday destination, particularly surprised him.

"There are amazing tourist beaches, but there are incredibly poor areas as well," he said. "Children fall out of school which means they don't learn English. This means they can't get a job in the tourist industry or read the warnings on cigarette packs.

"Children as young as 12 get into prostitution as a way of earning a living and buying cigarettes. And while I know there is no proof, I believe there are worse chemicals in the cigarettes they sell there than there are in the ones you can buy in the UK.

"What I do know is that companies that sell cigarettes with 10mg of tar in them in the UK, sell the same cigarettes with 15mg over in Mauritius."

Duncan got involved with Mary's Meals, which is part of Scottish International Relief, when he met founder Magnus McFarlane-Barrow in Romania a few years ago.

Magnus was in Romania to build an orphanage and Duncan was so impressed, hetold Magnus he would give him the money he needed.

Duncan said: "I had been travelling through Romania and had seen the problems, the children tied to hospital beds and the like.

"But I was impressed by the work Magnus was doing, so I have been supporting his projects ever since."

Duncan might now be one of Scotland's wealthiest men, but he was born into a poverty-stricken family and made his wealth through initially selling ice-creams and then by opening a chain of hotels and health clubs.

He has made it clear that he is not leaving all his cash to his children and intends to do as much charity work as possible before he dies.

He said: "I only became wealthy when I floated on the stock exchange in 1992. Since then I have given away somewhere between two and three million pounds to charity.

"When Magnus asked me to help with Mary's Meals, I just couldn't say no."

The idea for Mary's Meals came to Magnus just six years ago when he was visiting Malawi.

He was visiting a mum-of-six who had AIDS and only had weeks left to live. As she lay with her children around her, she told Magnus all she could do now was pray that someone would look after her children.

Magnus asked the oldest boy what he wanted out of life and his answer was simple - "food and the chance to go to school".

To make a donation to Mary's Meals call 0800 6981212 or click on www.marysmeals.org