Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School will welcome Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow to its campus on Thursday, Sept. 28 for the school’s annual “An Evening With …” speaker series. 

MacFarlane-Barrow is founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals, a global hunger charity that provides a daily meal in a place of education for more than 2.4 million of the world’s poorest children. Nutritious meals bring children to the classroom, where they can gain an education that provides a ladder out of poverty.

The Mary’s Meals campaign was born in 2002 when he visited Malawi in southeast Africa during a famine and met a mother dying of AIDS. When he asked her eldest son, Edward, what his dreams were in life, he replied, “I want to have enough food to eat and to be able to go to school one day.”

That moment was key in the founding of Mary’s Meals, which began by providing school meals to about 200 children in two primary schools in Malawi. Today, the organization serves meals to 2,429,182 children every school day across 18 countries – including the United States.

A part of the story of Mary’s Meals is that every person can do something to help. MacFarlane-Barrow will speak with St. Charles students and local diocesan middle school students in the morning and return later that evening to serve as the featured speaker for a special reception and dinner. 

All proceeds from this event will be directed to the St. Charles Endowment Fund to provide tuition assistance for the school’s current enrollment – more than 540 students representing 66 ZIP codes, 120 middle schools and 50 Catholic parishes in central Ohio.

The speaker series was initiated in 2015 by 1963 St. Charles alumnus Bob Walter and his wife, Peggy. Previous presenters include American business icon Peter Lynch, basketball ambassador and philanthropist Dick Vitale, Air Force veteran and Folds of Honor creator Dan Rooney, American author and decorated U.S. Army officer Wes Moore, former college and NFL football player and philanthropist Tim Tebow and Australian-American Nick Vujicic, an internationally known speaker who has traveled the globe sharing his life story and anti-bullying message to inspire millions of people.

MacFarlane-Barrow started his career as a fish farmer in Argyll, Scotland. In 1992 during the Balkan conflict, he and his brother Fergus were so moved by scenes of the conflict on television that they took a week’s leave from their jobs, loaded a jeep with aid and joined a convoy traveling to Medjugorje to distribute it. They never returned to farming.

For more information on the event at St. Charles, contact Julie Naporano, the school’s philanthropic adviser, at [email protected].