Mary’s Meals holds a Christmas market at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall to raise money to feed children

We visited the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall to speak to Jennifer Reoch from Heart Breakfast and the team behind Mary’s Meals.

Transcript

00:00My name's Jennifer Ria and today I'm here at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for a very special

00:05reason because it's the Mary's Meals Christmas Market and it's a brilliant day to be part of.

00:10It's a really packed market in there, there's so much wonderful stuff happening,

00:14loads of gorgeous wee gifts. I think it is perfect for this time of year when you're

00:18trying to work out what to get people for their Christmas. There's candles,

00:21there's hats, there's kind of all those wee beautiful things that you can get your hands

00:24on. There's a tombola, three for a pound bargain, you might get yourself something nice.

00:29There's also some crafts going on, you can make some beautiful ornaments into snowflake shapes,

00:33it really is all going on. I'm going to get lost in there for about the next three hours honestly

00:37after this, it's amazing. But the even better bit about that, not only are you going to get

00:41hands on something brilliant, but it's for an amazing cause. What we do at Mary's Meals is

00:45provide daily school meals to children who live in poverty in 16 of the world's poorest countries,

00:52places like Malawi, India, Liberia and Zambia. And all the funds raised at our stalls today are

00:58going to this fantastic work and we've got a great variety of items for sale. Mary's Meals helped

01:03I think 2.4 million children, those who just don't have food and they make sure that they're

01:08providing meals and they can do that with an incredible efficiency because they can do that

01:13for less than 20 pounds. I think it's 19 pounds and 15 pence can feed a child for a full school

01:18year. So that's about 10p a meal which is an incredible, incredible fee. There's also a double

01:22the love campaign going on at the moment as well, so any donations that are made are going to be

01:27doubled up to the value of 1.1 million pounds, which again that impact that it can have around

01:32the world and at the moment it's 2.4 million children. Hopefully we don't need to feed anymore

01:37but when that need is still there Mary's Meals is really going to try and make a big difference.

01:41You're feeding these children at school which means they're coming to school, so you're not

01:44only feeding them and nurturing them like with nutrition, but you're nurturing their brains,

01:48they're learning, they're coming to school for the food and for the education. So it's kind of a double

01:53win which is really amazing. So our stallholders today are a fantastic mixture of Mary's Meals

01:58volunteers, supporters and also local businesses as well. So we've got a really great variety

02:04of different things for sale and our volunteers have travelled from all around Scotland really

02:09just for this event and they make things like jam and write children's books and do sewing

02:16and painting and all these things. So it's really a celebration of all their talents as well to support our mission.