Stella Mar presents preview of Mary's Meals film featuring Gerard Butler

News from Mladifest 2019 | Mary’s Meals chose the 30th annual Medjugorje Youth Festival to screen an exclusive preview of Love Reaches Everywhere, a new film featuring Scottish actor and Hollywood star, Gerard Butler.

The film begins with the friendship between the actor – a long-time Mary’s Meals supporter – and the charity’s founder, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow. As Gerard gets closer to the lives of the people he meets in Liberia and Haiti, he discovers the everyday heroes at the heart of the charity’s global movement – children, parents, volunteers, fundraisers.

Mary’s Meals began by feeding just 200 children in Malawi in 2002. On 30 July, it was announced that Mary’s Meals is now feeding 1,504,471 children every school day in 18 countries around the globe.

Magnus introduced the 23-minute "sneak peak" of the movie, along with producer Sean Bloomfield of Stella Mar Films – the independent studio responsible for the movie.

Local videographer Jozo Ivankovic, a resident of Medjugorje, joined Bloomfield and co-filmmaker Cimela Kidonakis to help film in Haiti, with co-producer Jessi Hannapel assisting the team in editing the movie and singer-songwriter Denison Witmer contributing original music for the score.

The full-length version of the film is expected to be released later this year.

See more photos from the presentation at Medjugorje Live.

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For more information about this amazing charity, follow Mary’s Meals online.

Background to Mary’s Meals

Mary’s Meals is a Fruit of Medjugorje. During the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Magnus and his brother Fergus appealed to friends and neighbours for donations to help those suffering. The brothers loaded a second-hand Land Rover with supplies and joined an aid convoy heading for Medjugorje.

Magnus never returned to his old job and what was meant to be a one-off delivery of aid, grew into an international charity that was eventually to become Mary’s Meals.

Mary’s Meals is a simple idea that works – by providing a daily meal in a place of education, poor children are attracted to the classroom where they can gain a basic education that provides an escape route from poverty.

Our vision is that every child receives one daily meal in their place of education and that all those who have more than they need share with those who lack even the most basic things.

We are determined to keep our promise of a nutritious daily meal in school to those children already enrolled in our school feeding programme and – as funds allow – reach out to the next hungry child waiting for Mary’s Meals.

Our mission is to enable people to offer their money, goods, skills, time, or prayer, and through this involvement, provide the most effective help to those suffering the effects of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest communities.

Mary’s Meals is a grassroots global movement – an intrinsic part of our work is to involve as many people as possible, recognising that each has a unique part to play in this mission. Without passionate, motivated volunteers, Mary’s Meals cannot function.

Mary’s Meals is now feeding 1,504,471 children every school day in 18 countries around the globe.

Mary’s Meals consists of, respects and reaches out to people of all faiths and none.