Introducing our Promise Pledgers community

We recently launched the new identity for our community of regular givers; Promise Pledgers. We did this because we want our regular givers to have a sense of what they’re a part of; a very special community of people who are taking action to change the world for the better.  

Regular givers provide something very special to Mary’s Meals and the 2.4 million children who eat our school meals each day. They give us the ability to plan sustainably for the future. But it’s more than that. They give the children we feed a sense of security. In the midst of their often turbulent lives, one thing is secure: they will get a meal at school today.  

What’s in a name?  

The Mary’s Meals team put on our creative hats and came up with an enormous list of potential names for this incredible group of regular givers, and one theme kept coming up. ‘The Promise’ is something we talk about a lot at Mary’s Meals; our commitment to keep feeding the children in our programme while we strive to reach the next. It’s crucial to us that the children we feed, and their families and communities, know we are supporting them for the long term.

There is the promise that supporters make to us which allows us to keep our own promise to the 2.4 million children we feed. There is also the promise that we will keep striving to reach the next child – something we are only able to do because of the security provided by regular givers. And lastly, there is the most important promise of all – that which is within each child that we feed. It is our hope that, with a little help, this promise can be unlocked and the children we serve can go on to shape their own futures.  

So what about ‘pledgers?’ We wanted this group to be identifiable and active. It’s not a passive thing to support these children, it is the pledge of someone who does not accept that children all over the world should miss out on their education because of hunger.  

A unique identity

The idea of community kept coming up and so we looked for ways to show how the acts of the individual contribute to something much bigger when we all come together. The ‘i’ in ‘promise’ reminds us of the individual. We realised we could highlight the ‘i’ in lots of words connected with our work – like impact, difference, gift. And, as luck would have it, the ‘i’ also looks a little bit like a person, adding in that idea of human community and connection. So our Promise Pledgers identity was born.  

The children at the heart of our mission

Photos have always been crucial to how we communicate. The children we serve are at the very heart of our mission – how better to show the difference people have made but with photos of smiling children eating nutritious food?  

For Promise Pledgers, we wanted to really communicate the impact that regular gifts have in the long term. With simple, childlike illustration, we highlight elements of our beautiful photos that show this difference in action. Lines around a school book, drawing on steam above a cup of porridge – these simple elements draw the eye, centre the child and highlight how food changes the story.  

To all of our Promise Pledgers, past, present and future, we’d like to say thank you. We hope to see the community of Promise Pledgers grow and spread the word in their own communities so that together, we can help to change the future for millions more hungry children.