ON THE COVER A Million Happy Smiles! Helping Hand Appeal 2018
Thank you – you’ve boosted our Helping Hand Appeal past the million pound mark! And what a celebration we had…
We’d blown up the balloons, chilled the prosecco and ordered the cake. All we needed now were our colleagues, former colleagues, invited guests and the winners of our Meet The Team competition to help celebrate our wonderful news. My Weekly readers had reached the £1 million landmark!
We welcomed our guests with a glass of fizz and showed them a small exhibition of some of the wonderful things the Helping Hand Appeal has achieved over the years, then we cut our cake (you can’t have a My Weekly party without cake).
We’d also erected a beautiful illuminated tree and hung pictures of some of the children who are receiving help from Mary’s Meals with inspiring quotes about the difference it’s making to their lives.
We heard from Harrison Watson, former editor of My Weekly and the person responsible for launching the very first Helping Hand Appeal, to cheer children in Romanian orphanages.
“The fact the Helping Hand Appeal has made a million is totally amazing!” he told us. “It started off as just sending Christmas cards. We did a piece in the magazine asking readers to write the orphans Christmas cards.
“But then one reader wrote to me and said, ‘How would you feel if all your grandson got for his Christmas was a card?’ So we started the Helping Hand Appeal to make more of a difference, and most of the time we winged it. The things we did in those earlier years to help those children were totally amazing!
“The whole appeal was reader-led. It really was. It was fed back to readers the whole time so they could see how the money was being spent. It was also a whole team effort and the My Weekly staff also kept the magazine going, allowing the appeal to happen.
“I want to say how pleased I am that the staff here have continued with the appeal and allowed it to climb to heights we could never have imagined when we started by asking readers to send Christmas cards.”
Next we heard from Daniel Adams, a former member of the My Weekly team who went to work for Mary’s Meals and is now CEO of the UK side of the charity.
“It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the Helping Hand Appeal has really transformed so many lives. In some of the poorest countries in the world, children are so poor they are forced to beg or forage for food, so the last thing on their minds is going to school.
“So Mary’s Meals removes that barrier and the children are able to come in, receive a meal and get an education. We now feed over 1.3 million children every day across 17 countries.
“The joy of aid completely outweighs the harder parts of what we do. It’s great to see the difference the money has made, because I know how easy it is to despair at world hunger. It’s a scandal in this world of plenty that children still
“The Helping Hand Appeal really has changed so many lives”
go hungry. But thousands have been fed and educated thanks to My Weekly readers’ support.
“On behalf of the children that have benefited from your kindness, thank you so much. Thank you for – like us – firmly believing that the children receiving Mary’s Meals will grow up better nourished and better educated to become the men and women who will lift their communities out of poverty and end reliance on aid.
“At Mary’s Meals we are aiming towards our happy redundancy. Thank you to the staff and readers of My Weekly for bringing us ever closer.”