Volunteer
There are many ways to volunteer for charity
Our volunteers are crucial to our success. They form an essential part of the unstoppable driving force behind us reaching the next child waiting for daily meals in school.
From small tasks and home-based efforts to volunteering your specialist skills, you can give your time and knowledge to make a meaningful difference that will resonate way beyond your own community. We believe that everyone has something to contribute to this mission – it doesn’t matter if you have just a few hours to give or can commit to a day or more each week, we’d love to hear from you.
The more people who are working towards our vision, the more children we can reach. We know food changes the story for the world’s poorest children and everyone can play a part – what will you do?
A Few Ideas
Raise awareness by organising your own event or offer to help at a local Mary’s Meals fundraising event.
Put a Mary’s Meals mug or collection box in a local shop, cafe or community centre and see how quickly you can collect enough to feed a hungry child for a year.
Nominate Mary’s Meals as your chosen charity at work and encourage colleagues to fundraise all year round.
Read and share our book - spread the word about our founder’s (Magnus-Macfarlane Barrow) book that tells the story of Mary’s Meals and encourage others to pick up a copy. You could also share your favourite extracts on social media or recommend the audiobook to a friend.
Arrange a screening of one of our half-hour documentaries – Child 31, Generation Hope, and Love Reaches Everywhere in your home or community or show one of our shorter films as part of another event or celebration.
Give an awareness talk in your workplace or at a local school or community group – wherever you have contacts and people are willing to listen!
Use your professional skills to help support Mary’s Meals
Some people have spare time to carry out vital grassroots activities in their own communities.
Others bring professional skills that can help us to grow the movement and reach the next child waiting for Mary’s Meals:
TRANSLATION
Axel from Germany volunteered his time and skills as a certified translator to convert Magnus’ second book, GIVE: Charity and the Art of Living Generously, into German, saving us thousands of pounds and helping Mary’s Meals Germany to reach a wider audience.
COMMUNITY AMBASSADORS
The grassroots network in Ireland is the beating heart of all volunteering and fundraising activity across the country.
They use their love of Mary’s Meals to spread the message and gather support through traditional, local, community-based activities with powerful results.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
A dedicated team of volunteers play a key role in PR and social media promotion in the Czech Republic. Some bring professional experience while some are recent graduates seeking to hone their skills by working as part of a team. They all bring enthusiasm, dedication, and a passion for the mission – and it really shines through in their work!
RETAIL
In the UK, volunteers collect secondhand goods, organise the donations and work in shops selling the pre-loved items to help raise money for Mary’s Meals. This is a considerable task but the rewards are huge – not only because the shops raise funds to feed hungry children, but because their presence in local high streets helps to make Mary’s Meals a household name.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
In Croatia (and some other countries too), design professionals and students are getting involved by developing artwork and other visuals for campaigns to help support the work of fellow volunteers and fundraisers. Creating eye-catching designs is a wonderful gift because their efforts help to bring news of our work to new hearts and minds, and ultimately help to feed more children
MARY'S MEALS IS NOW FEEDING 2,058,099 CHILDREN
Thanks to the presence of our school feeding programmes, every child who receives Mary’s Meals is secure in the knowledge that, regardless of circumstance, they will receive a nutritious meal every school day at their place of education.