The man who feeds one million children

For 47-year-old Magnus, all that matters is that his charity, Mary's Meals, continues to feed impoverished children all over the world.

From providing meals to 200 children in one Malawian school in 2002, it now feeds 996,926 chronically hungry children every day.

They're in Liberia, Malawi and 10 other countries, across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.

In his memoirs, to be published on Thursday, Magnus tells the amazing story of Mary's Meals.

It's a compelling read about one man's vision and compassion, and how it has had a remarkable effect on children many thousands of miles from its base in Dalmally, Argyll.

He was a fish farmer in Argyll, still in his mid-twenties, when, in late 1992, he and his brother Fergus, their consciences pricked by TV news reports of the Bosnian conflict, organised a local appeal for refugees.

The response was so generous that three weeks later, the brothers, and their second-hand Land Rover, joined an aid convoy bound for Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The donations continued to flood in. Magnus made more than 20 long journeys to Bosnia in the first year. Deliveries were also made to Croatia.

A registered charity, Scottish International Relief, was born. In time, it built homes for abandoned children in Romania and set up mobile clinics in Liberia.

In 2002 Malawi was one of a number of countries in southern Africa affected by a deadly famine. Some districts were hit by floods, others experienced the agonies of dry spells. Whatever the cause, several million people were affected.

Magnus made his first deliveries of food there. Gradually, Mary's Meals was born. It has been a remarkable success story.

Says Magnus: "I was in Donegal recently and met these amazing Mary's Meals support groups. I'd never met them before and there was one amazing story after another on the incredible things that people are doing for the charity.

"That sort of thing renews my enthusiasm all the time and I suppose that's what I feel like, right from the beginning, from those early days when I went to Bosnia.

"You can get swept along with this wave and it has never let up. I don't feel so much like I'm pushing anything, it's more like I am being swept along by it. It very rarely feels like a burden or a hardship. I love it.

"Like other things in life, as you get older you get a wee bit more tired, flying around different time zones, but I love it as much as ever."

In Malawi, the charity now works across some 25 per cent of the country's primary schools. The beneficial impact can already be felt.

"Some of the longer-term things will take longer to gather evidence on, but school enrolment has increased, and attendance rates and academic performance have improved hugely," says Magnus.

"One of the great things, and the reason I called the final chapter of the book Generation Hope is that you now have a generation of people leaving school.

"It's really uplifting to meet these incredible young people who are going to change things in their communities and their countries. There are lots of them, and they say they would not have gone to school if it had not been for Mary's Meals. That longer-term impact is only just beginning."

Liberia, newly declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organisation, is Mary's Meals' biggest country after Malawi.

"It's a place very dear to my heart. It has suffered in a particular way. We were there during its civil war but I was there before Mary's Meals - that was my first experience of Africa.

"There's probably an even greater need for Mary's Meals there than in Malawi: it's one of the worst countries in the world for numbers of children out of school.

"Liberia is important for us and we hope to be able to reach more children there."

In his book Magnus touches not just on the 57 million impoverished children across the world who remain out of school but also the other 66 million who attend school but are unable to learn properly because they are so hungry.

He describes as 'a scandal' the fact that millions of kids are not fed each day and that thousands starve to death every day. He urges governments and international bodies to devote a tiny fraction of their resources to feed all of Africa's primary-school children.

Does he think that the will is actually there? "I don't know. I'm not clear about why it doesn't happen because I think it is achievable. I understand the point of view of the governments in the countries where we serve meals that they are so under-resourced and have so many difficult choices to make.

"I do question why 57 million children will be out of school because of hunger. Some of the other goals facing the international community are much harder to achieve. But addressing hunger would be something that they could hold themselves to account for and succeed in."

He can at least console himself with the thought that he has already done so much, and that his charity has such a positive image.

"It puts a smile on people's faces," he says. "There is something about it that makes people happy, and that's one of the reasons I love it."

The donations continue to come in, too. One man arrived in the charity's Oban shop to donate £1,200. Marie, the shop manager, asked for his details, so that he could be properly thanked.

"You don't need to know my name," he said. "Life's been good to me."

* The Shed that Fed a Million Children: The Extraordinary Story of Mary's Meals, is published on Thursday by William Collins (£12.99 hardback). It will also be available as an ebook. Charity's website is www.marysmeals.org.uk