Dyna has a deep personal connection with Mary’s Meals – it is more than her career. It is rooted in her childhood and is something that gives her a sense of belonging, purpose and joy.

 “I got the opportunity of working for Mary’s Meals and it made me happy because I knew that I was once in the position that children are now, eating the porridge every day,” she explains. “Being part of Mary’s Meals makes me happy because I know that I am part of the programme that it is helping a lot of children here in Malawi. 

“When I got the opportunity of working with Mary’s Meals it became a dream because looking at the children as we go back to the field it makes me feel that this is my home. This is where I grew up.” 

Receiving daily school meals as a child 

Dyna first learned of Mary’s Meals when she was nine years old and her school, Lunyangwa Girls School in Mzuzu, northern Malawi, started serving daily school meals. In those early years, the porridge helped with the hunger she would often feel. “Where I grew up as a child most of the families did not have enough food. It was hard for most of the community to have daily food. With Mary’s Meals beginning in the community, it helped children to have a meal at school which gave hope to the families as well as to the whole community. “I had still that hope to look forward for something at school, that was porridge. It did help me to have energy at school, to concentrate better in class and to even play with friends because we had porridge.”

How Mary’s Meals helped Dyna’s education

Dyna explains that the impact of the school meals continued long after her primary years, because in Malawi children can only go to state secondary school if they pass their primary exams. She believes the daily school meals were key to her progressing with her education. 

“With Mary’s Meals at the time, it did help me to get good grades because I was eating porridge every day, I was attending school, which helped me focus on my education and in the end, I got good grades. After primary school I was accepted to a government school to do my secondary schooling and after that I went to a private university where I studied social work.” 

Impacting future generations 

Today she is involved with Mary’s Meals from the other side – delivering the school feeding programme. She is responsible for collecting and analysing data on the impact that the school feeding programme is having. Mary’s Meals served its first school meals in Malawi in 2003 and is now providing daily meals to more than 1.3 million children at school, more than 25% of pre-primary and primary children in the country. 

For Dyna it is easy to see the difference that daily school meals are making. 

“Most of the children that do come to school, they come from the poorest families, they don’t even eat at their home so as they come to school, they have the hope that they will have a daily meal at school. Being part of that is what inspires me. 

“What I enjoy most about my job is when I go back to the field and see how porridge impacts the lives of children, seeing children eating porridge, seeing the joy that porridge brings to them, how they focus in school. 

“Also, I know it is not only about the children, but the community that we are feeding because knowing that their children go to school, they know that their children are being fed and being well taken care of by Mary’s Meals.”

It costs just A$34.80 to feed a child in their place of education for an entire school year.