Community Volunteer

Mary’s Meals is a grassroots, global movement that sets up school feeding programmes in some of the world’s poorest communities, where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education. It’s a simple idea that works. We provide one daily meal in a place of learning in order to attract chronically hungry children into the classroom, where they receive an education that can, in the future, be their ladder out of poverty.

Mary’s Meals began feeding just 200 children at a Malawian primary school in 2002. Today, we are reaching 1,667,067 children with a nutritious daily meal in places of learning across 19 countries.

The average cost for Mary’s Meals to feed a child for a whole school year is just £15.90. We work hard to keep running costs low to ensure that at least 93 % of every £1 donated to us is spent directly on our charitable work. This is only possible because most of our work is done by our family of volunteers.

As a Community Volunteer, you would be helping us to raise funds & awareness within your local community to support our work, e.g. by speaking to groups; host a film screening; organise an event or encourage local businesses to adopt a collection can. (PLEASE NOTE this role does NOT involve physically providing meals to communities here in the UK.)

Skills

The range of activities involved in this role are tailored to suit different skill sets and can fit around a volunteer's personal schedule. Fundraising could be as simple as placing a collection can in your local shop, or it could be organising your own community fundraiser. It could also be helping us with some research/phone calls/virtual presentations. Awareness raising is a key part of this role, helping us share the Mary's Meals story within your local community and beyond.