Celtic Quick News will be 10 years old next year and to mark the occasion, through Mary’s Meals, we’re going to construct a kitchen and shelter facility at the Kholoni Primary School in Mchinji, Central Malawi, which currently has no food preparation facilities.
A brick-built building, the kitchen will consist of one main cooking area with two small locked storerooms. In one, firewood for the stoves will be kept and, the other will store food and utensils. The kitchen will be fully equipped with stoves, pots, serving equipment, mugs and spoons and the 1221 children will be provided with a daily meal of a vitamin-enriched maize porridge. The kitchen will also have teaching facilities, to allow it to be used as a classroom outside meal times.
17% of people in the world live in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) but there is plenty of good news, the proportion of world living in this condition halved in last 20 years (this was a UN Millennium Development Target). Life expectancy (at birth) of low income people in 1990 was 52, but in 2011 it was 60. Infant mortality dropped by a third during this period and maternal mortality almost halved.
Since humans first walked the earth a significant proportion of them have lived in extreme poverty, but while someone once said, “the poor will always be with us”, for the first time ever the decades ahead could see all of humanity escape from extremely poverty.
Malawi, according to the UN the 17th least developed nation on earth, is one of the world’s extreme poverty front lines, but even here, the trend is encouraging. In 1990 child mortality between 0-5 years was 244 deaths per 1000 live births. By 2000 this had dropped to 174 per 1000. Last year the figure was 71 deaths per 1000 from 0-5 years. The UK passed that figure more than 70 years ago, but the rate of improvement in Malawi is nothing short of incredible. It is fertile ground for the right kind of help.
Mary’s Meals, a Scottish charity established in 2002, feeds 822,142 kids in 16 countries every day. They keep costs low and employ local staff in kitchens, ensuring 93% of money donated reaches those in need, possibly the highest rate of any comparable organisation. It costs £7 for Mary’s Meals to feed a child in Malawi – for a whole year. 20% of Malawi’s children (600k) are fed by the organisation, often their only meal of the day.
In 2012, a sample of 44 schools found that enrolment had increased by 30% two years after the introduction of Mary’s Meals. Academic achievement improves too. The benefit is not just escape from hunger, it is access to education for children who would otherwise have to work for food. It also provides an increase in productivity and economic capacity when the children enter the workforce.
CQteN St Patrick’s Day Party
The kitchen will cost £7000 and I’ve told Mary’s Meals we’ll raise enough money by St Patrick’s Day, which gives us three months. We have a lot of work to do but the focal point will be the CQteN Dinner on Friday, 14 March 2014, which will be the biggest and best St Patrick’s Day Party in Scotland.
We’ve hired the Kerrydale Suite at Celtic Park. Tickets are available for £50, tables of 10 are also available. To reserve a ticket or table email me, celticquicknews@gmail.com. The event has been discussed in the comments section for some weeks without a formal launch and we quickly sold out the smaller capacity of the Kerrydale Suite. We have now taken the entire suite so additional tickets are available.
Between now and then there will be the odd auction to help us along, and we will continue to support the work of the Celtic Foundation (who have a Children’s Hospice Association Scotland auction on now), the Kano Foundation, and the many needy causes a lot closer to home than Malawi.
The UN are currently considering Development Targets for 2030, with the eradication of extreme poverty likely to feature. Poverty is a complex subject, so even after 2000 years development, we know there will always be comparative poverty, but within our Generation of Domination, extreme poverty, less than $1.25 per day existence, could be eradicated.
There is no more appropriate way to mark the 10th anniversary of the blog. This will be our payback for all the hours, days, weeks and months of pleasure (and toil) we’ve gotten out of the these pages over the years. Put 14th March 2014 in your diary, we’re having THE St Patrick’s Day party!
For more information on Mary’s Meals take a look at the video below:
Get your CQN Annual below. From now on £5 from every Annual sold will go to the CQN Malawi School Kitchen appeal.
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Surely not
Get In!
ffs
whit
4th….shoite
1st ?
Topish of the afternoon to ya
Woo Hoo CQN Annual has just made it to Dublin
Arrrrrrrghhhhhhhh
hope this softens the blow
real madrid 2-6 barcelona 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz9h0mogT04
barcelona 5-0 real madrid 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rZjDSfi4ss
Thanks for the link Paul and HH for the kitchen.
This weekend is a special one for The Kano Foundation. It’s our patron , Martin’s , birthday as well as the game where we take the 2000th child to a game , fully paid for and supported by the fans .
Come up and see us at the gates on Janefield at LL end .
HH
Sanna
Paul 67,
Great effort to support Mary’s Meal and a great way to mark 10 years
Wow , just made the first team AFTER reading the article and thinking about what i wanted to say – no mean trick !
Paul67 –
“the focal point will be the CQteN Dinner on Friday, 14 March 2014, which will be the biggest and best St Patrick’s Day Party in Scotland.”
Don’t tell the Coatbridge St. Patrick’s Day Festival organisers – they’ll batter ye!!
Pfayr
From previous:
I’m guessing you’re on commission :-)
HT
Sadly no
Just like to see ordinary bhoys being successful
HT
“I’m guessing you’re on commission”
Is that one of them new drugs the yout’ are taking? :-)
Paul67
Just when I’m thinking enough’s enough for me on CQN you produce a really genuine happy clappy story!!
What a lovely tale of hope.
A great cause for CQN to support. I have donated and contributed to it for years now.
Not looking forward to tomorrow. Manager at odds with players, players at odds with each other and board, board p***ing over everyone.
oh well…
Great cause Paul67.
Having been to Africa and done something similar in Kenya it is humbling to see the difference this will make. The whole village came to see the ovens and kitchen facilities we had installed and they are used almost 24 hours a day not only for the school but for everyone.
LB
Dinamo Zagreb 3–4 Austria Wien 0–2 3–2
Ludogorets Razgrad 2–6 Basel 2–4 0–2
Viktoria Plzeň 4–1 Maribor 3–1 1–0
Shakhter Karagandy 2–3 Celtic 2–0 0–3
Steaua București 3–3 (a) Legia Warsaw 1–1 2–2
Next years pot could be stronger.
great post and a fantastic cause …in fact you could say Awfy Braw….aye it is all of that …
SFTB
Wouldn’t know I prefer the natural high of a hat trick at 5s :-)
Pfayr
Despite what I’d posted I would give Johnstone a chance now.
The entire club could do with a lift perhaps he could provide it.
Failing that I’ll strip at the next home game :-)
The Honest Mistake @ 12:24 on 13 December, 2013
Next years pot could be stronger
—————————————————————-
Good. This year’s pot has been a real disappointment.
Sannabhoy, congratulations on your 2000.
Clashcitybhoy, it sure is.
NatKnow, sure.
Hamiltontim, there’s always hope, in your heart……….
LiviBhoy, that’s great to hear.
A lot of druggies on here…tut tut.:-)
Paul67
Great article and brilliant cause.
Let CQN unite and shine!
A fine olde articlwe, Pwaul76,
Shame about the Grammar. ;))
Can you fix mine whilst yer at it?
Also, I see there is no link to the Iron Man anymore, is CQN likely to get copies back in, in Time for Christmas?
Paul, Great initiative for the kitchen and shelter facility at the school in Malawi !
Moving on to tomorrow’s game – Celts v Hibs, Saturday, 15:00.
What’s not to like.
Could be a close game, but a chance for us to shrug off events of the last week.
Bobby Madden is ref, anybody knowwhat’s he’s like?
What’s the betting that any Celt having the audacity to be fouled in the opposition penalty area will be yellow carded (perchance red carded if he’s the last man)?
Sunny -18 degrees at 1 30 pm -way down .south.
Mrs S of T does her zumba and then the cinema with her pals thing on a Thursday night –I stay in and watch the Europa League.
Elfsborg are absolute mince . They got 4 points [played 6 , won 1, draw 1, lost 4}
Karagandy can only aspire to being mince -they got 2 points [ 4 defeats/2 draws]
A wonderful gesture Paul.We do similar work here in Turkey,but for handicapped kids school,who are shockingly underfunded by the government.If it was not for the expat community,god knows where these kids would be.I was really heartened to hear your figures on what actually goes to the charity.Having worked there,I know all too often the money and aid does not reach the most needy.
Great work.
I really admire the work done by Mary’s Meals and I’m pleased that CQN are getting involved.
We’ve sold more than double the number of CQN ANNUALS this year compared to last year’s launch edition. We were looking through the stats last night and there are around 500 CQNers who ordered a copy last time but haven’t got their new edition from CQN. Some will have bought elsewhere eg Celtic stores etc and some might just not be on CQN at the moment for whatever reason.
Paul’s fantastic blog today finishes off by saying that £5 from all orders of the Annual going forward will be donated to the CQN Malawi School Kitchen appeal so if you are one of the 500 or you haven’t purchased the Annual at all then why not get a copy in time for Christmas? All copies are posted first class. Order below Paul’s blog.
Anyone wishing to reserve tickets for CQTEN please email celticquicknews@gmail.com – we have around 300 ticket already reserved and the Kerrydale Suite will have a strict limit of 450. It’s going to be a very special evening.
RRC, well said.
Petec, Iron Man is still here and available. Link will be back on over the weekend and can be found on yesterday’s article.
sixtaeseven, cheers.
Turkeybhoy, well done and thanks for letting us know.
Hate to mention the morons name,but Keevins has really excelled himself today with the most vitriolic attack on our club that I have read in a long time.Bile and hatred spewing from the article.
Used to work with a guy from Malawi.
His first name was Kingdom…..seriously.
Every morning he used to be late up for his breakfast…..
You know the rest…..
Before everybody started eating they would say out loud….Has Kingdom Come?
RapierwitandreparteeCSC
Paul67,
Thanks, I skimmed outside the articles, didn’t realise you had to go inside.
Keep up the good work, excellent initiative today.
Turkeybhoy
I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that guys like Keevins, Walker etc hate us. I genuinely just think that they have this belief that if they slag of any aspect of Celtic then they’ll be seen as being honest and fair minded in the eyes of their peers and the readership.
BFDJ, Waddell and Jackson are a completely different kettle of half witted balloons :-)