For August's main meeting the charity Mary's Meals presented their work in enabling children around the world to attend school by ensuring a meal is provided.

It's a simple premise: hungry children don't learn or probably attend school at all. As explained by Catherine [1] the charity works locally to ensure every child receives one daily meal in their place of education. Currently Mary's Meals works in 16 countries, feeding more than 3 million children.

Not a bad outcome for a charity running from a shed in Scotland. Catherine explained how the charities founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow had first collected and delivered aid to Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1990s Balkans conflict. A 2002 aid trip to Malawi in southeast Africa lead to meeting a 14-year-old boy called Edward. Edward was the eldest of six children, all sitting with their mother who was dying of AIDS. Magnus asked him what he hoped for in life and Edward replied: "I would like to have enough food to eat and to be able to go to school one day." The rest, as they say, is history.

The charity emphasises ensuring that donations are spent on aid not administration. And for the very modest amount of £19.15 a child can be fed in school for an entire year. Check their website for ways to contribute.

By tackling the practical impediment of hunger the power of an education is released. And education is powerful, far more than just learning things. It unlocks a bigger world, possibilities and most importantly, hope.

As an aside, it wasn't until the Elementary Education Act of 1870 that local authorities had a duty to provide schools for all children. Universal education in England is still fairly new!

[1] aided by Robert acting as the technical department.