Manchester United star Marcus Rashford has announced that he has teamed up with FareShare charity to raise more than £20m to feed the needy and vulnerable children in the UK. The striker had earlier voiced his support for a scheme that provides food for school children who are reliant on school feeding at home during the lockdown, the English striker also made a generous donation to the scheme. His contribution has helped raised awareness as numerous supermarket donated food items and cash.
Tesco, Asda, and Co-op donated the sum of £15m, £2.5m and £1.5m respectively. At the same time, sandwich shop “Pret A Manager”, and Pizza Express have contributed.
Footballer @MarcusRashford has thanked the staff and volunteers @FareShareUK for their work fighting hunger and food waste. 👏👏👏
— BBC North West (@BBCNWT) July 29, 2020
Rashford took to social media to share the pictures of him visiting the charity. pic.twitter.com/QZ96CRA2Sl
The striker told Manchester United Podcast. ““It was a slow process at first, and we just set it at trying to get to £100,000 and a couple of days passed, and we were way past that and then a week passed, and the numbers just kept getting higher and higher. “It got to a stage where we actually had a lot of donations, more than we expected, and we were struggling to actually deliver the food to people, so that’s where the bigger companies like Tesco, Co-op, Asda, they’ve come in and helped us massively with deliveries on that side of things and also put in their own large donations as well.
To the staff, volunteers and everyone that continues to work behind the scenes to make a difference THANK YOU! The world needs more people like you. Let’s keep going, the fight is far from over 👏🏾 @FareShareUK pic.twitter.com/WVT4d3t97E
— Marcus Rashford (@MarcusRashford) July 28, 2020
“I think it’s just around £20m now. It’s a big number. At first, the donations were going kind of slow. I put a bit of money in myself, and it was at £50,000, £60,000, and I just remember two days later it was at £140,000, and then a week after that it was at £6m-£7m after some of the bigger companies started coming in.
“Just two or three days ago it reached £20m.”
Tesco pledged to support FareShare, @TrussellTrust & independent food banks with £15m worth of food to feed vulnerable people during the pandemic. We're immensely grateful to @tesconews for donating 4.5m meals worth of food to FareShare. Thank you 👏 https://t.co/LjRr90MHlq pic.twitter.com/eWowsh22Ce
— FareShare (@FareShareUK) July 25, 2020
The striker also revealed how his family had to rely on such a scheme.
“We don’t know how long this is going to go on for, and it’s just something that, if this had happened 10 or 15 years ago, it definitely would have affected myself in the position I was in when I was a kid, so it was just something that I thought if there’s a way to try and help people and kids especially then let’s just try and do it.”
The young striker was recently awarded honorary doctorate for his campaign against child poverty and hunger in the Uk and for his exploit in sport by the University of Manchester.
