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Under normal circumstances, Mary's Meals reaches more than 128,000 impoverished children across Liberia each day, attracting them to the classroom with a nutritious meal in school. However, the recent crisis has brought a temporary halt to the charity's feeding programme in the country, with all schools now closed.
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The charity has now launched an emergency response to the Ebola outbreak by distributing food to children in their homes.
"We have been working in Liberia since 1997 at the height of the country's hideous and terrifying civil war," said Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, Mary's Meals' founder and CEO. "During those years, we supported the people amidst unimaginable violence. Today, we are determined to again provide continuity and potentially life-saving support, at a time when the communities we serve are facing, in Ebola, a truly frightening invisible enemy.
"It is thanks to the generosity of our supporters around the world that Mary's Meals can act quickly in times of crisis to provide vital food supplies to people in desperate need."
The Mary's Meals crisis response has already seen around 69,000 children receive emergency food rations in their homes and is focused on two counties, Grand Cape Mount and Bomi, both of which have been cut off from the capital Monrovia by military blockade. At least 3,000 people infected with Ebola have died so far this year across Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
