Generous Daily Express readers have raised enough money to feed more than 530 children in Ethiopia a plate of fortified porridge daily for one year.
Over £10,000 has been sent to UK charity Mary’s Meals to help them continue their feeding programme in Tigray, a region plagued by looming famine and the fallout of war.
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, CEO and founder of Mary’s Meals, said: “I hope we never lose a sense of outrage that any person or child in this world of plenty would face death by starvation.
“But what we do with these feelings – and the action they prompt – is ultimately what matters most. As a close friend in Tigray told me recently: ‘All we need to do is act and act now!’
“Our actions can still make a difference. And in the incredibly generous response by many Express readers to our recent appeal, we see evidence of this.
It costs just £19.15 to feed one child a plate of fortified porridge every single school day for one year.
Mary’s Meals is feeding around 114,000 children across 223 schools in the region.
The organisation is having a major impact on attendance rates, enrolment and boosting concentration levels among youngsters in the classroom.
The Express has spent weeks highlighting stories from the frontline of Tigray, including sharing the toll of war and food shortages caused by drought.
Up to 600,000 people were killed and millions displaced during an armed conflict that lasted from November 2020 to November 2022.
The war was primarily fought in Tigray between the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigrayan forces on the other.
Malnutrition is on the rise as food becomes scarce, and the haunting spectre of famine looms large over the region.
Schools, which should be places of learning and growth, are instead filled with the empty desks of children too weak to attend.
Mary’s Meals hopes that the international community will once again wrap its arms around the region as it did during the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
The £114million raised from Bob Geldof’s LiveAid – which was 39 years ago tomorrow went towards saving thousands of lives.
MacFarlane-Barrow said: “The response to famine that it generated was one the world had never before seen.
“It gave rise to a genuine belief that famines could be consigned to the history books and that, eventually, ‘zero hunger’ might one day be achieved.”
To donate to Mary’s Meals, please visit their website.