Mary's Meals is on the move!

THE Mary's Meals charity group covering Armagh and Benburb has found a new home.

In the last number of years the awareness of the children’s charity Mary’s Meals has been growing in Northern Ireland; it provides a free meal to more than 2.4 million of the world’s poorest children every school day.

For many of these children this is the main meal of the day and the food helps them to concentrate which means that they can learn and hope for a better future.

There are many Mary’s Meals support groups in this country and one of the longest running is the Armagh and Benburb group.

Started by Pauline McCormick from Blackwatertown, this group have been active for the last 10 years.

Until 2022, the focus was on sending filled backpacks to children in Malawi, and in total they sent about 30,000 filled backpacks.

When that project ended, they concentrated on fundraising and to date they have raised approximately £425,000.

For nine of the 10 years that this group have been supporting Mary’s Meals, the old clinic in Dobbin Street, Armagh was the premises used by them for their work. It was an ideal building for the filling of backpacks because it is so spacious and has many separate rooms. However, the group no longer need a large premises for the work and when the offer of a room in Benburb Priory was made they were delighted and gratefully accepted.

It is interesting that the inspiration to begin this work for Mary’s Meals came from a group of mothers who used to pray together in Benburb Priory. So the support group are returning to the Servite Priory in Benburb.

Pauline, the co-ordinator of the group, is very excited about this new beginning.

She said: “We started in Benburb and now we are going back to Benburb. We had great years in Armagh and had fantastic support but we feel that the move will energise us to keep going, to continue this vital work to alleviate the hunger of little children.”

The group have some new fundraising initiatives to bring with them to Benburb. They have two gift cards available to purchase, one for ten pounds and one for twenty pounds. Róisín McVeigh who designed the cards explains that the gift cards can be given as presents, just like any gift card.

She explained: “These gift cards make perfect presents because most people love to know that their gift is providing life saving food to poor children somewhere in the world”.

The new Mary’s Meals centre in Benburb Priory will be open every Tuesday to Friday between 11am and 4pm. All donations will be most welcome.

The group have undertaken a challenge to fund daily school meals for 5,000 children this year and the fundraising target is £95,000 so every donation counts.

Each meal costs just 10p so if you donate 50p that is a meal for five children!

The group also have a fundraising account so if folk can’t make it to Benburb, they can use the following link bit.ly/5000children .