A Scottish charity is celebrating a £425,000 grant from the People's Postcode Lottery

A Scottish charity has received a boost in its fight against hunger.

Mary’s Meals has been granted £425,000 from the People’s Postcode Lottery.

Part of the funding award will be used to provide 9,000 impoverished children around the world with daily meals for a whole school year.

The remaining money from players of the charity lottery will support the development of Mary’s Meals as it grows to reach more hungry children.

People’s Postcode Lottery players Tracey Black and Gilli Chrystal joined founder and global chief executive of Mary’s Meals, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, and Callum Aitken, programmes advisor with People’s Postcode Lottery, to celebrate the news.

They gathered in Dalmally in Argyll, at the shed where the work of the charity first began and which still serves as Mary’s Meals’ global headquarters.

MacFarlane-Barrow said: “We are incredibly thankful to players of People’s Postcode Lottery for sharing in our belief that every child should have enough to eat and an education. Together, we are giving hungry children the chance to fulfil their hopes and dreams for the future.

“The generosity of players means that 9,000 hungry children will eat a meal in school today and, looking to the future, many more young lives will be transformed by this wonderful gift.”

Mary’s Meals began feeding 200 children in one school in Malawi in 2002 and now reaches 1,257,278 children in their place of education.