KASAMA, Zambia — The dusty, undulating track of road, misshapen by the rainy season months ago, seems to never end as our local driver deftly navigates his 4×4 into remotest northern Zambia. We pass the occasional man, woman and child strolling by the roadside, as well as isolated straw-roofed huts, each without electricity or water mains. The land and vegetation around us is mostly scorched by fire to aid farming production as the sun beats down overhead through the clear, arid air typical of the end of the dry season. Together with a team of journalists and staff from Mary’s Meals, we’re on our way to visit a state-run school that has recently become one of the global charity’s many school feeding programs. Founded by Scottish Catholic Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow after he met a Malawian boy during a famine who told him he just wanted enough to eat so he could go to school, Mary’s Meals supports school food programs in some of the world’s poorest communities, helping to ensure hunger and poverty are not an obstacle to education. Since its founding in 2002, the charity has experienced phenomenal growth and now feeds an estimated 3 million schoolchildren in 16 countries. Its Zambian program alone is providing meals to 700,000 learners in more than 1,000 schools after 11 years in the country. Melodic African birdsong greets us as we arrive at the Pontini School about 50 miles from Kasama, the nearest major city. The location is so remote that we are told many of the children may never visit the city during their lifetime. The school, comprising just one single-level building of two classrooms for 423 pupils age 7 to 18, began its own Mary’s Meals feeding program in June. “It’s helped us a lot,” says Patrick Chileshe, a Catholic who heads the school’s parent- teacher committee. Already, he says, they are seeing positive results: “We now have no absenteeism, and the children are well motivated to learn.” As we arrive, three volunteers, each mothers of pupils at the school, are busy preparing the first of two meals for the day. Corn soya, filled with nutrients, is mixed with water fetched from over a mile away and stirred into a porridge in large vats provided by Mary’s Meals. Corn soya becomes porridge for students, thanks to Mary’s Meals.(Photo: Edward Pentin/National Catholic Register)When the feeding time arrives, the children filter out of the school and regimentally line up to receive their porridge, each clasping his or her own plastic mugs, also provided by the charity. “The children are very excited and happy — they don’t complain when they go home,” says one of the cooks, Teresa Mtali, 56, whose 17-year-old daughter Maureen attends the school and hopes to become a nurse. Even when Maureen graduates, Teresa says she will continue to make the porridge, as “education is very important for the children.” “We have seen a marked improvement in concentration at school,” says Simon Chama, a parent Read More