We are a parish charity, founded 40 years ago, at the St. Margaret's site, to help with international aid based on the Christian aim of loving one’s neighbour, as described in our constitution:
“To assist worthwhile development projects and programmes in the poorest countries of the world and to provide emergency aid through charities and others working in areas that have suffered natural disasters and famine.
Projects are supported on the basis of need and the potential to make a real difference to human, social and economic development. We look for quality of management, feedback, environmental and financial sustainability and value for money.”
We are run by a group of parishioners and are open to and welcome all (including Holy Name Parishioners) who want to help. There is no fixed membership but we have three elected officials to comply with charity law:
President: Estelle Holligan
Treasurer: Maureen Japp
Secretary: Martin Wilkinson
We raise money by:-
*parish activities and collections.
*special fund-raising events such as the One World Breakfasts held in the crypt periodically after Sunday morning mass
*Collect donations from parishioners. Some give occasional donations but others have committed to regular payments such as monthly transfers into our bank account. Some are general donations which can be used for any of our projects but some are from collections in Mary’s Meal collection boxes which interested parishioners can collect from the back of the church or in the crypt.
We can show you how we work by looking at last year’s activity (2022-2023) during which
we raised income of about £8119 made up as follows:
| Donations | £5122 |
| Mary’s Meals boxes | £591 |
| Family Breakfasts | £1179 |
| Gift Aid from HMRC | £1158 |
| Food donations | £65 |
There were 33 Mary’s Meal boxes. A proportion of the donations and breakfast income was gift aided.
In that same year we spent £7908 on the following projects and emergency appeals:
| Haiti Help | £1000 |
| SCIAF Ukraine Appeal | £500 |
| PEAS International | £250 |
| EMMS International | £500 |
| SCIAF Pakistan Fund | £500 |
| Practical Action | £800 |
| Mary's Meals collections: | |
| Geveh Fanchee School Liberia | £2758 |
| Famine Appeal | £500 |
| General Fund | £200 |
| Double the Love | £100 |
| Syria Earthquake Appeal | £500 |
| Yemen Appeal | £300 |
There were four emergency appeals to which we responded immediately and there were other donations to charities which we would like to explain to you.
Haiti Help was founded by three local nurses from Lochgelly to give medical help and child care to incredibly destitute people in one of the poorest countries in the world which is continually being ravaged by civil war and has suffered natural disasters. We have been supporting them for over ten years. Below is a picture of some of the children we support through Haiti Help.
PEAS International helps girls in poor African countries to go on to secondary school when they would not normally be able to do so.
EMMS is the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society which was founded in 1841, one of its founding fathers was David Livingston. This charity helps families in countries challenged by poverty and disease to gain access to healthcare services and to break the cycle of poverty and injustice. It is driven by Christian aims but helps people of all faiths. They have many projects and we recently supported one for a water ambulance on Lake Malawi, now fully self-supported. A picture of the water ambulance can be seen below.
Practical Action is an international development charity that helps poor people, who are dependent on the land, to cope with climate change. Below is a picture of Practical Action project that we support: a Solar water pump in Zimbabwe to help crop growth despite climate change.
Mary’s Meals main activity is to provide a daily school meal to children in impoverished countries around the world so as to attract to school those children who might not otherwise get any education. Currently almost two and a half million meals are served everyday in 18 countries. As well as collecting for Mary’s Meals general fund, for them to apply where they need, we pay for all the meals during the year at Geveh Fanchee school in Liberia as a member of the Sponsor a School programme. Below is a picture of some of the children at the school.
We keep a reserve of approximately £500 in the bank so we can respond immediately to emergency appeals. There were a lot of these last year so we spent much the same as we collected so we need to investigate new ways of raising money to increase our available funds.
Lock down stopped our regular coffee mornings with home baking, after 10:00 mass each Saturday, and restarting these will be difficult because of regulations that now limit the use of home baking. Also, even before COVID attendance on Saturdays was declining so is there a need?
We are planning to hold the popular One World Breakfasts every two or three months. Some of these are sponsored by parishioners to celebrate notable days in their lives, for example a Golden Wedding.
Please feel free to make donations. You can just make a single donation of what you can afford or if you wish set up a regular bank transfer, see our bank details below.
| Account Name | St Margarets One World Group |
| Sort Code | 83-33-00 |
| Account Number | 10191867 |
If you prefer to send a cheque, please contact:
Please take a Mary’s Meals box from the church porch if you would like to gradually collect at home. When the box is full, please leave it in the Sacristy from where we will collect it.
If you are giving us donations and you pay income tax you can increase the value of your contribution by 25% by signing a gift aid declaration for us and HMRC will give us the 25% extra money on behalf of the Government. You may already have a gift-aid agreement for your church offertory collections but those are separate from us so if you want to benefit us, you need to sign another agreement. Please contact Maureen Japp (details above) for this.
As well as contributing money all parishioners are welcome to join in helping at our events. There is no formal membership needed. You can also attend our meetings and make suggestions about how we can raise funds and of any other charities we might support.
Finally, we really want to express grateful thanks to all parishioners who so very generously donate to our funds throughout the year.
