Poverty, pollution and hunger
Mary’s Meals works closely with our partner, BREAD, to serve meals to more than 55,000 children marginalised by poverty in India.
Published onI was recently fortunate to visit our programme in India. It was my first trip to the country and it’s fair to say I carried with me a well-worn set of preconceived ideas shaped by films, stories and second-hand anecdotes.
I spent the week with our school feeding delivery partner, Board for Research Education and Development (BREAD). Working alongside BREAD, Mary’s Meals has been serving school meals across four states in India since 2004 – and we currently feed more than 55,000 children every school day.
Experiencing a programme first-hand in person is invaluable. It tells you so much about what is working and what can be improved. Spending time in the country helps you better understand the context the programme is operating in. Being with the programme’s staff gives a broader understanding of its moving parts, strengthening existing bonds and helping to form new ones. And simply being able to focus for several days on that one programme, which is not feasible in my daily work, gives much more opportunity to learn.
School feeding in India
Nothing could have prepared me for the levels of smog I witnessed. India has some of the worst air-pollution in the world – 30 times higher than the WHO recommended safe breathing levels the week I was there. Picture the sun almost blotted out during the day and not being able to see the river you are driving over.
At the time I visited, schools and centres were temporarily closed, and people were advised to stay at home because of the hazardous pollution levels. It's not a challenge our other programmes often face, and it hit home that while we could rearrange our trip, if necessary, people living there must breathe this air every day and have shorter lives and serious medical conditions as a result.
Although it’s a country of great wealth and boasts one of the fastest-growing economies, it’s also one of the most unequal. Millions of children live in multi-dimensional poverty, experience hunger and face barriers to education. The government operates one of the world’s largest state-run school feeding programmes, but not all schools or places where children receive an education are eligible. This is where Mary’s Meals and BREAD make a difference – ensuring children who would otherwise go without, can benefit from a school meal.
A daily meal for children in their place of education
The majority of our feeding programmes in India operate in schools, although we also support children at non-formal education centres, which is often where we’re needed most. Visiting some of these centres further highlighted the inequalities children in India are living with.
Driving to one centre, we passed private gated mansions on the outskirts of Delhi. However, the wealth soon faded and revealed densely populated communities living a different reality. Tucked behind a bustling urban street was a modest room where a dedicated group of nuns work to support children facing severe poverty, some living in tiny shelters built amongst rubbish dumps with no clean water or electricity. Many families moved here with a dream of better jobs and lives. Sadly, faced with overcrowded environments and limited employment, that often doesn’t materialise.
With minimal income from day labouring jobs or collecting and selling metal, it’s difficult to find food for the family and children often forgo education as a result, to help earn extra money. However, with Mary’s Meals, they can go to centres for a meal and an education, rather than working or scavenging to find food.
Fostering a sense of pride and partnership
We also visited formal primary schools in Jharkhand state. Many of them are in rural locations populated by indigenous, tribal people. Here, life was much slower, and the challenges mirrored those of our programmes in sub-Saharan Africa – farmers contending with erratic weather worsened by climate change and children walking miles to and from school.
Again, there’s limited employment and many rely on subsistence farming for food. Despite this precarity, families donate rice to the school feeding programme where they can. Across all the schools, all those involved with the programme took great pride in it. This was evident in how they spoke about its impact on children, as well as in the well-managed storerooms, clean kitchens, bright menu boards and well-kept documents.
Pride was also something that struck me with the BREAD staff I met, too. Spending time with them, after years of remote contact, was my favourite part of the trip. For them, delivering the school feeding programme is a vocation, not a job. Every time they go to a school, they see the impact of Mary’s Meals, and it was an immense privilege to witness that myself and be with the team that is helping to bring our vision to life.
It’s thanks to the generosity of our supporters and volunteers that all this is possible, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who is a part of this incredible global movement for what they are doing to make Mary’s Meals a reality for children in need across the world.
It costs just £19.15, €22, $25.20 USD or $31.70 CAD to provide a child with school meals for an entire school year. Learn more about our work in India and how the promise of a daily meal in their place of education enables the children we serve to receive an education.
Paige Boxshall is one of Mary’s Meals’ Programmes Relationship Managers, whose role it is to maintain strong relationships with our Programme Partners and coordinate the support we provide so that they are able to deliver high-quality feeding programmes as effectively and efficiently as possible.