In a remote Scottish valley stands a small iron shed that is affecting the lives of a million children thousands of kilometres away. The shed was the birthplace in 2002 of a tiny charity called Mary's Meals, run by a man called Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow. Magnus now employs fifty people in the Scottish city of Glasgow, but continues to work from the shed himself.

Magnus used to work for a large humanitarian organisation, and this job took him all over the world. During one trip in 2002, he was being shown round a school by a local teacher, when he asked a young boy of 14 what his dreams were. The boy said, 'to have enough food to eat and to go to school. [37]______] He would provide dinner for them each day they were at school.

As he researched it over a lengthy period, Magnus found that many children around the world were going to school without having had any breakfast, and they weren't getting anything at school-so it would be evening before they got fed," Magnus says.  [38]______]

At the last count, Mary's Meals was working in 1,300 schools in 12 countries across four continents, providing school meals to 996,926 children each day. 'You find that when school dinners are provided, enrolment increases by around 18%-in some instances it's a lot more and the school roll has doubled in a matter of weeks,' says Magnus. [39]______] And attendance rates go up too. because in many schools children are enrolled but don't attend school very often, and that changes

once they know they will be fed. And academic performance also improves a lot-because now not only are children coming in to school, they are also not hungry in lessons.

The successes are all the more remarkable given the fact that it costs relatively little to feed a child for a whole school year. While Mary's Meals has grown dramatically, it has a modest income in comparison with other charities. [40]______] The school feeding programmes are run by local communities. Mary's Meals works to establish links with local farmers and community leaders such as teachers. These people organise a small army of volunteers, most of them mothers, who cook and serve the meals. Mary's Meals provides the kitchen, with all the cooking equipment. It also pays for the locally sourced food and gives training.

In 2012 one young supporter of Mary's Meals, nine year-old Martha Payne, catapulted the charity to new heights of fame when she started a fundraising blog about her own unhealthy school dinners in Scotland and was briefly banned from doing so by her local council. [41]______]  The decision was soon reversed after protests on the internet.

Magnus's main focus, however, remains more global [42]______] There are, he says, an enormous number of children across the world who are not in school because of hunger and poverty. 'In many ways, I feel we are just beginning.

A This was an idea of brilliant simplicity, but proved complex to put into practice. 

B The sums Involved are still enough to have a significant impact, though. 

C He felt that was an intolerable situation and knew that changing It would make a big difference. 

D The Incident attracted a lot of attention, which Magnus admits was not unwelcome.

E Magnus realised there and then that there was one relatively simple intervention that could transform life for children all over the developing world. 

F He is delighted with the way things have gone so far, but says there's a great deal that remains to be done. 

G 'In the short term that can be problematic, but in the long term it's fantastic,' he adds.