ACTOR Gerard Butler swapped Hollywood for Haiti where he shared a meal with children being helped by school feeding charity Mary’s Meals.

The star travelled to the Caribbean with Mary’s Meals’ founder and global chief executive, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, to see the charity’s life-changing work first hand.

Gerard joined pupils at École Communautaire Saint Michel de Morne Mouton in the impoverished town of Mirebalais in Haiti’s Central Plateau to try Mary’s Meals’ food for himself and see the difference that nutritious daily school meals can make to whole communities.

He said: “Mary’s Meals is such a simple idea.

"I’m inspired by the genius behind it, and how it promotes responsibility in everybody.

"It’s a very efficient way to essentially enhance the lives of so many in poor countries and it can be developed and extended so cheaply.

“I’ve been cheered up no end by these beautiful souls who, despite living in a country that has gone through so much hardship, have nothing but love to give.

"Communities are transformed by what Mary’s Meals does to feed children in a place of education. I’ve seen it in action in Liberia and now Haiti.”

Mary’s Meals works alongside local communities in 17 countries to set up school feeding programmes in areas where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education.

In Haiti, local volunteers prepare a nutritious school meal of rice and beans with a tasty sauce made from vegetables and fish for 41,831 hungry pupils every school day.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas – three in every four people struggle to survive on less than $2 a day and more than half the population does not have enough to eat.