‘Not even Covid, has been able to thwart that torrent of generosity’
In his new book Magnus Macfarlane-barrow, the founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals, issues a heartfelt plea for a better understanding of true charity and recognition for the positive role it can play in all our lives
My children have recently returned to school after a five month break and are currently attempting to adjust to another new reality. The fun bits of school – hanging out with friends, making new ones, playing team sport against other schools – are for now a thing of the past. My oldest daughter meanwhile is about to depart for a new life at a university, where there will be no freshers week, lectures will be delivered virtually and many of the things that make student life exciting will not be happening. It can be hard for some to see the light at the end of the tunnel at the start of this new academic year.
But this is a time to count blessings too. At least their schools and universities are re-opening and at least they have their health. Their parents haven’t lost their jobs. They might not be able to have the same fun at lunch break, but at least they know they will eat some lunch. And later, dinner too.
Sadly, we know it isn’t like that for an increasing number of children in the world today.
Even before the pandemic many parents faced a horrible daily struggle to feed their children. My own work with Mary’s Meals – a global charity that provides daily meals in school to the world’s poorest children – means that I have had many encounters with families who suffer in that way. Over the years I have many times returned home from places like South Sudan, Haiti and Somalia and told my children about the those I have met there – about their terrible circumstances, their daily fight with hunger and their overwhelming desire for the gift of education which they know can set them free from poverty. In fact, the mission of Mary’s Meals is all about that: meeting the immediate need of the child by providing a meal, but at the same time enabling them to gain an education by always serving it in school.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,” WB Yeats once wrote about the power of learning to transform the world. And perhaps that isn’t only true for school pupils.
In one sense, this experience of Covid-19 gives all of us the opportunity to return to school and to learn new things in new ways. Certainly, for me, the experience of the last few months has been an education which I hope might help me become a better leader and steward of charity. Because having responsibility for soliciting gifts for a good cause and ensuring they become effective help to those for whom they were intended, is not a small thing. And it is fraught with risk.
Back in March of this year, when all over the world countries began to ‘lock down’ we, like many other charities asked ourselves whether our funding could possibly hold up. The vast majority of our income is supplied by gifts given by individual donors many of whom were now experiencing new economic hardship, surely some kind of drastic decline in income was inevitable?
Five months later, lots of uncertainty remains – and as ever there are many more children in need of Mary’s Meals than we can currently afford to feed – but the level of giving to our mission during this period has not decreased. In fact, it has defied all logic by growing. One of the core organisational values that guides Mary’s Meals is our
All of us have the possibility to give in different ways in our lives, and all of us at times need the help of others
‘confidence in the innate goodness of people’. This values statement was not the result of a brain storming session but rather it was the articulation of a lived experience. Our mission was only born because of an unexpected, extraordinary outpouring of kindness, across Scotland, made in response to a little appeal my family made in 1992 to help those suffering because of the war in Bosnia Herzegovina. And our mission has only grown in the way it has around the world because those acts of goodness have never let up. And it turns out, not even Covid, despite its best attempts, has been able to thwart that torrent of generosity. It would have been hard to predict that people struggling with unprecedented economic challenges and surrounded by all sorts of new needs in their own communities would give even more generously to children in distant lands. But that is what they have done – folk with huge hearts, aware that the world’s poorest children are suffering more acutely than ever, and that Mary’s Meals has found ways to feed children during school closures, have dug deep and kept giving despite the huge new challenges in their own lives.
Human beings are amazing. Whenever a darkness extends over the earth their acts of charity let the light in. Their little fires start to grow, allowing us to gather together and await the dawn. And that togetherness is the other great reminder and lesson I have learnt during this strange season.
One of the risks inherent in the practice of charity
– and the root cause for many a mistake made by charitable organisations – is a disconnection and loss of respect which can develop between ‘the giver’ and ‘the receiver’ or between an organisation and those it serves. This disconnect can begin in a subtle way when we start to identify only as ‘the giver’ (bestowing gifts and the fixer of other peoples’ problems), whilst thinking of the people we give to as only ‘receivers’ (poor, passive recipients of help, often to be found in a far way place and given certain labels such as refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people). That kind of thinking almost inevitably leads to an attitude of us the giver also being superior to the receiver. And that dangerous state of affairs can lead charitable organisations as well as individuals down wrong paths.
The reality of course is not binary. None of us are only ‘givers’ and or only ‘receivers’. Authentic charity is always something both received and given. All of us have the possibility to give in different ways in our lives, and all of us at times need the help of others. And for many of us, asking for and receiving help can be much more difficult than giving it.
And so the disturbing changes caused by Covid occurring all around us – in our schools, universities, churches, care homes, communities and in our own daily lives – can prompt us not only to acts of charity for others, they can also remind us of our own fragility and reliance on others. Those in need of help are to be found in our own communities and even in our own homes. They are very close. In fact they are also you and I.
And of course it has always been thus. The lessons I have learnt recently – the wonder of human beings in their capacity to practice charity, and the fact we need to receive it as well as give it – are not new. I have been taught both very well before now, but like many a slow learner I have benefited hugely from some serious revision.
‘The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet’ Aristotle wrote a very long time ago. And that too is a truth that endures.
● Give: Charity and the Art of Living Generously by Magnus Macfarlane-barrow is published by William
Collins, £16.99 hardback. Out now. All profits from the sale of Give will be donated to Mary’s Meals and other charities