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William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

Copyright © Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow 2020

Scripture quotations marked ‘ESV’ are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ‘NJB’ are taken from The New Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1985 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd and Doubleday & Co., Inc., a division of Random House, Inc. and used by permission.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008360016

eBook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008360023

Version: 2020-05-27

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my parents.

Thank you for showing us that charity begins at home

but does not end there.

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Dedication

5  Contents

6  Introduction

7  1. ‘We Have It in Our Hearts’

8 2. Charity in the Dock

9  3. Organising Love

10  4. The Heart and the Head

11  5. Charity and Beyond

12  6. Mapping the Stars

13  7. Without Trumpets

14  8. Blessed and Broken

15  9. Transformation

16  10. Charity Remains

17  Epilogue

18  Acknowledgements

19  About the Author

20  Also by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

21  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Introduction

Charity to me will always smell of freshly baked bread. During the summer of 1985, even as the man on the radio updated us on the Ethiopian famine and its mounting death toll, my mother was pulling yet another batch of loaves from our oven. She was supporting a local fundraising effort aimed at helping those facing imminent starvation. Each warm loaf was adding to the delicious aroma in our house, before being delivered to the village hall to be sold amid an assortment of donated home baking.

Beyond our village, across the whole country, a plethora of such fundraising events were taking place that summer, the world having been stirred into action by an extraordinary news report by BBC reporter Michael Buerk. From a refugee camp in Tigray, surrounded by the dead and dying, he had described to us ‘the closest thing to hell on earth’. Among the many fundraising efforts born in response to that horror, one dwarfed all others in its scale and ambition.

On 13 July 1985, along with 30 per cent of my fellow human beings, I sat down to watch Live Aid on the television. For a teenager living in the pre-internet era, the opportunity to spend a whole day with my friends enjoying live performances by the superstars of rock and pop felt almost too good to be true.

It was a great day. We cheered the bands we were fans of and ridiculed the ones we didn’t appreciate – although once or twice we had to begrudgingly admire even some of their performances. As the bands in Wembley played on into the evening, the US version began in Philadelphia and some live performances from there were also beamed back to us. No one said as much, as we joked and laughed and debated each artist’s performance, but it felt as if we were part of something special. By now Bob Geldof was giving us regular reminders of what this spectacular event was all about – raising funds to help the 8 million people who faced starvation in Ethiopia. At one point in the evening, David Bowie, having belted out ‘We Can Be Heroes, Just for One Day’, introduced a short video. It was four minutes of the most harrowing images I had ever seen. Suddenly in the room with us were emaciated children with protruding ribs and bloated stomachs, the piercing scream of a child, a tiny bandaged corpse. It was deeply shocking. We took turns using the house phone to call and pledge our own donations. I think it might have been the first gift to charity I ever chose to make. (I had long been putting coins in the plate at Sunday Mass but that didn’t feel very optional.) As I hung up the phone, having shared my bank card details and a very little of my summer job earnings, I was surprised by a fleeting, unfamiliar feeling; a stab of joy and a momentary yearning to be someone better – and for the world to be something better too. I don’t think it was just the beer.

Aside from the trauma of watching Scotland play football in the World Cup, Live Aid is the only vivid recollection I have of watching something on television in my youth. I am not sure if the experience played any part in my later journey into overseas aid work – there were certainly other, more obvious, triggers that led me to that – but I do believe that event in the summer of 1985 had an influence on the way I, and others of my generation, feel about certain things. The advances in technology that enabled us to watch those simultaneous concerts and which brought us distressingly close to the suffering in Ethiopia were creating new neighbours in distant countries; both those who urgently needed our help and those with whom we could respond in solidarity. Live Aid not only made charity feel possible, it made it feel ‘cool’, to use a word of the time. Having grown up in a devout Christian family, I had a fairly well-developed understanding of, and belief in, our duty to help the poor. From earliest memory – long before our house became a bakery that summer – I had been witnessing acts of charity. Some, like the making of bread, were quite mundane while others, such as my parent’s unlikely decision to foster a seven-year-old boy with serious health issues, were more radical. I was familiar too with the stories of saints of old and their heroic acts of charity, but even so, the message just felt a bit different when delivered by Neil Young or Elvis Costello and received in the company of my best friends. For better or worse, without us knowing it, the era of celebrity-led charity campaigning had just been born.

Seven years after enjoying Live Aid, my brother and I watched another harrowing report on the television, this time about refugees whose lives had been devastated by the war that was tearing apart the former Yugoslavia. Our response on this occasion was very different. We made a little appeal to friends and family for donations of basic supplies and, having been given them in astonishing quantities, we took one week’s holiday from our jobs (we were salmon farmers) to drive the gifts from Scotland to a refugee camp near Medjugorje in Bosnia–Herzegovina. I had no notion then that this would lead to the founding of a new charity which would eventually become Mary’s Meals – a global movement which, today, sets up community-owned school feeding programmes in the world’s poorest nations, providing over 1.6 million children with a daily meal in a place of education.

Like the founders of Live Aid, I had no relevant qualifications to lead this work, having simply been moved to act (in a much less ambitious way) by compassion for the suffering people brought close to me by the media. Nor did I have any long-term plan. The journey I set out on twenty-eight years ago has become my life’s work only because that initial outpouring of kindness to our first appeal has never let up. That first trickle of donations has grown into a mighty river fed by little acts of love performed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world in support of our mission. In Malawi alone, where over 30 per cent of the primary school population eat Mary’s Meals each day, over 85,000 impoverished volunteers freely offer their time to cook and serve the hungry children of their communities. Meanwhile, in many wealthier countries, a vast army of volunteers, young and old, organise fundraising events, give public talks and take part in sponsored activities in order to provide the funds required to buy the ingredients for each meal. Each day we receive donations of all sizes made by those willing to share what they have so that others might at least eat. Children in primary schools collect coins and sell homemade baking, while their parents might commit monthly donations from their bank accounts. And while most of our support consists of these humble, unheralded deeds of charity, sometimes gifts of spectacular size, or representing radical life choices, are also presented amid this assortment of startling goodness. And each year as the number and value of these gifts grow, so does the number of children being fed.

The story of Mary’s Meals suggests that charity is alive and well. And in many ways, indeed it is. However, this is only one story. There have been many less happy ones pertaining to charity during the same span of time. Charities seem to provoke consistent criticism, and a few have even been the cause of great scandal. Several concerns about how charities do things never seem to go away entirely: ‘Charity CEOs are paid far too much!’ or ‘They just waste our donations on high overheads!’ are among the familiar refrains.

In 2015, Olive Cooke, a ninety-two-year-old English charity volunteer, took her own life after being hounded by charity begging letters. Three years later, the high-profile sex abuse scandal initially relating to Oxfam staff in Haiti dominated headlines around the world, deepening further a crisis in public confidence. A survey that year, carried out by the Charities Aid Foundation in the UK, found that only 50 per cent of people ‘agreed that charities were trustworthy’, while a similar survey in the USA revealed that less than one in five Americans ‘highly trust’ charities. On taking up her post as the Chair of the Charity Commission for England and Wales in 2018, Baroness Stowell declared that their extensive independent research showed that ‘people now trust charities no more than they trust the average stranger they meet on the street’.

Charity, in some quarters, has a bad name, her reputation tarnished by behaviour not fit to be associated with her. And each fresh scandal provides a new opportunity to ask other more fundamental questions. ‘Does aid do more harm than good?’ is one I first heard asked in the aftermath of Live Aid. Accusations that some of the funds raised had been siphoned off by the Ethiopian government, whose policies had played a huge part in causing the famine in the first place, led to suggestions that Bob Geldof’s intervention had actually exacerbated the problem. As the years went by people pointed out that Ethiopia remained as poor as ever despite all the support given, and queried whether charitable efforts such as Live Aid just mask the underlying causes of poverty rather than helping address them.

Perhaps we were being simplistic and naïve that summer of 1985, carried away by a heady aroma of baking bread and rock-star righteous anger. Are those who persist in donating to charities just incurably gullible? And is the very concept of charity itself out of date – supplanted by things more sophisticated? For those of us who want to make the world better, maybe it is time to move on and engage in efforts aimed at supporting growth in the economy, international human development, the environment and political change?

There is no doubt that some aspects of Live Aid were flawed. The fact that no African artist graced the stages of Wembley or the JFK Stadium is cringe-inducing. The dramatic upturn in the careers of many Live Aid performers and their subsequent financial success is also, perhaps, troubling. And it is probably reasonable to suggest that the relationship with the government of Ethiopia could have been handled differently.

However, Live Aid and our response to it clearly did change things. It eventually prompted the international community to release enough surplus food stocks to end the famine. One million people died unnecessarily, but a much higher percentage of the 8 million people who faced starvation at one point might otherwise have succumbed. And surely Live Aid played a part in the subsequent change in attitude towards international aid by Western governments and helped inspire some of the effective campaigns that have targeted debt relief and fairer trade arrangements in the years since? After all, amid the multitudes who tuned in to watch the event, in addition to aspiring salmon farmers were future prime ministers and presidents. And the fact that in the years since, more timely, robust international responses have meant that no famine has ever resulted in a death toll like that seen in Ethiopia is another testament to the positive changes induced by that effort.

The debate about the merits and flaws of Live Aid corresponds to a broader one about charity and aid in general. One of the obstacles to productive discussion on these topics is a confusion about the scope and purpose of certain interventions. For example, Band Aid (the organisation founded to organise Live Aid and other related initiatives) never set out to lift Ethiopia out of poverty, and yet it was criticised for not doing so. Even the name itself should have pointed to the fact that this was always about relieving the immediate suffering caused by a human catastrophe. The objective was to save lives, not to tackle the underlying causes of hunger. The emaciated people of northern Ethiopia, days from death, were not in a position to await the outcome of some long-term development plan.

A better shared understanding of, and genuine respect for, different types of charity is much needed. However, while more clarity on this is an essential starting point, it will not alone restore faith in charity. For the way in which we carry out our work of charity is as important as the end results. Even if an organisation has developed a laser-sharp focus and the most efficient systems, but along the way has lost respect for those it serves, it will sooner or later become a scandalous thing. A charity that has established incredibly sophisticated fundraising techniques but has somehow forgotten that the people whose support they seek are humans who love, not ATM machines that just spit out money, is no longer worthy of the name. And even if they are implementing the most robust financial systems, when charities no longer revere each gift entrusted to their care as precious and unique, no matter their size, they are heading for a fall.

Charity is love. When we forget that, we horribly diminish this most noble human virtue. To be tasked with organising charity is no small responsibility. When we do it well, we elevate charity and help people to understand more about the wonder of humanity and the wonder of themselves. We can help both the giver and receiver of charity to become more fully human and to have more meaningful, more joyful lives. We can create places for faith, hope and love to flourish and thus allow the impact of our efforts to ripple out from the specific cause we are addressing to help create even more fundamental change in the world – change that can be subtle and substantial at the same time. But when we fail in our stewardship of charity, we can crush the human spirit and provide new reasons for cynicism, selfishness and even despair. We can encourage people to turn inwards instead of outwards. We cause harm that also ripples out beyond our particular failure – further damaging a broken world.

For many years my co-workers and I have been grappling with questions about the essence of charity and how to be its good stewards. In the face of our own mistakes and doubts, we have repeatedly been challenged and lifted up by those carrying out their little acts of love in support of our particular mission. They have spurred us on to try again and again to get it right; to renew our efforts to live up to the standards of charity that they, our supporters, set; to attempt to return always to a belief that those of us who are lucky enough to be employed in this work are servants of love – a love received and given.

And so we keep asking questions of ourselves. How do we best exercise stewardship of the resources entrusted us? How do we maintain a deep, authentic respect for those we serve and those who support our work? How do we define our mission in regard to where our responsibilities begin and end? How do we build appropriate relationships with governments and other key stakeholders? Are the values and approaches that served us well when we were a very small organisation still relevant to us today when millions of people in many different countries have a stake in our mission? I believe that only through finding answers to these questions and trying to put them into practice on a daily basis can we become stewards more worthy of the task of organising charity.

But journeys into charity are not only important for those of us involved in running charitable organisations – they are vital for anyone who wishes to become a better person. How we practise charity defines us as individuals. The way we encourage and foster it will shape the future of our societies. And yet, today more than ever, despite charity becoming a conspicuous part of Western culture, it is questioned, misunderstood and sometimes ridiculed. It might even be said that charity is currently suffering an identity crisis. But our fractured world, in which the loudest voices are so often egotistical, would do well to listen to the quiet voice of charity; to learn from it and to celebrate it – even if authentic charity does not seek that for itself.

And by practising charity more fully we will come to know ourselves more fully. We might discover along the way that it is not only the poor person over there that needs charity, but ourselves too. Within our very selves we may even discover famines – parts of us starved of love – or areas of darkness into which we have never before ventured. These journeys into charity might take us beyond the monthly direct debit donation we rarely think about (good though that is), or the sponsored run with our friends that is mainly fun (good though that is) and ask us to embrace things that involve risk and discomfort. Our relationship with charity can be a key that opens previously locked rooms where our greatest treasures lie in wait – where gems such as joy, peace and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose glint and glimmer in the dark.

But these journeys can be difficult. Maps are hard to come by and treacherous terrain can prompt us to turn back towards the comfort of home. And this would be a tragedy – especially because the joy to be found by those who persevere is one that can transform our lives. The happiest people I have ever met are the most charitable people I have ever met. And they are the people who will surely also have the biggest impact on the world in which we live – and its future – even if that might not always be immediately apparent. Things I have seen on my own journey thus far leave me in no doubt that even good deeds that seem very tiny to us can reverberate across oceans and even down through generations, causing all sorts of joy that would not otherwise be felt, in the lives of people who might seem very far removed from us.

During those first days of trying to help the people of Bosnia I fell in love with charity. I became enthralled by it. I was fascinated by those I saw practising it in ways that made me want to become a better person. I have been on that journey ever since and the truth is that sometimes I wonder if I have travelled any closer to my destination. Despite all these years enrolled in this very privileged school of charity, I am still a novice when it comes to practising it. Some seem to find this much easier than others and, in this matter, I have not been blessed with much talent. But I persist in the knowledge that God loves a trier and that charity is something within reach of each one of us at every moment – not just those with certain attractive personalities, or those who have chosen certain vocations or professions, or those with a particular education or adherence to a certain creed.

The work of Mary’s Meals, which has spread around the world in a way I could never have planned or even imagined, has been fuelled by charity – by lots of little acts of love. By witnessing such acts countless times, I feel like I have come to know what real charity looks like, even though it might manifest itself in very different ways across diverse cultures and situations. The poor, the rich, rock stars, children, the elderly – all of us – are capable of the most beautiful and startling acts of charity that can change us and the world around us for the better.

I dare to write this book about charity then, not because I am a star pupil or an expert practitioner, but because this protracted journey of mine has allowed me to befriend many who are. While visiting distant famines or local school assemblies, in the aftermath of earthquakes and challenging sermons, and in the face of child hunger and adult surplus, I have encountered radical acts of charity being performed by profoundly charitable people. Their acts of love have surprised and challenged me. They have made me ask questions and they have renewed my desire to understand better what charity is. Through them, I have also come to believe, that where we see authentic charity, we see God.

When I hear charity misrepresented or belittled, I feel almost as if someone has spoken that way about my own mother, even as she quietly goes about the business of kneading another lump of dough in her desire to share some of the bread that belongs to all. For charity is too precious a gift to be disparaged and demeaned without defence. She is too crucial in our personal quest to become more fully human to be distorted by ill-chosen words and lazy rhetoric. And she is too wonderfully distinct to be confused with something she is not, and certainly too noble to allow wickedness to cower beneath the shelter of her name.

And that is why, despite not knowing all the answers, I have chosen to write this book.

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‘We Have It in Our Hearts’