Category: News

As the schools re-open this week, there’s much more to be done to ensure children are able to focus on their studies – rather than having to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

It’s this goal – ending child food poverty in Britain – which Manchester United and England footballer, Marcus Rashford, now has in his sights.  Marcus himself grew up in poverty in Wythenshawe in south Manchester, and knew as a teenager what it was to go without food.  That is what is motivating him to speak truth to power

“Food poverty is contributing to social unrest,” he wrote, reflecting on a series of recent meetings with families in need of the same support he counted on as a child. He described “watching a young boy keeping it together whilst his mother sobbed alongside him, feeling like he has to step up to protect his family and alleviate some of that worry. He was nine years old.”

“I know that feeling,” he wrote. “I remember the sound of my mum crying herself to sleep to this day, having worked a 14-hour shift, unsure how she was going to make ends meet. That was my reality.”

Marcus is backing calls on the Chancellor, to fund the implementation of three key policy recommendations from the national food strategy, a Government-commissioned report highlighting huge economic and health inequalities, which will be aggravated by the coronavirus crisis. These include:

• extending free school meals to all families in receipt of Universal Credit
• rolling out the Holiday food and activities programme, designed to tackle the growing problem of ‘holiday hunger’ nationwide.