RASH CASH
Marcus Rashford raises £20m to provide food for schoolkids affected by coronavirus as Tesco, Asda and Co-op donate
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MARCUS RASHFORD has won a staggering £20million bonus for the nation’s needy children.
The Manchester United star this week announced he was working with the charity FareShare, helping them distribute food for kids who would otherwise go without meals because schools have been closed.
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But having pleaded to the public that every little helps, Rashford has been left stunned by the response.
For the England striker, 22, has scored his greatest-ever hat-trick. Thanks to Rashford...
- Tesco have donated food worth £15m.
- Fellow supermarket giants Asda have thrown in £2.5m cash.
- The Co-op are providing £1.5m in food.
There have also been notable assists from Pret A Manger and Pizza Express, who have also come up with a slice of the action.
And a host of smaller food companies around Britain have chipped in to Rash’s appeal.
By yesterday, a total of £160,000 in cash had also come in from the public.
The news follows yesterday’s announcement that Rashford and his Old Trafford team-mates, are donating a total of around £1m to NHS hospitals in Manchester.
They will each give just under 30 per cent of a month’s salary to help NHS staff fight to keep patients alive in the area.
Yet no single person has inspired so much generosity to one cause during the coronavirus crisis.
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Rashford, who revealed he grew up on free school meals, began promoting the work of FareShare on March 19, calling on food companies with surplus products to distribute them through the charity.
He pointed out on Instagram that due to the closure of schools he was deeply concerned that up to 600,000 children would go hungry.
Yet it has been revealed that Rashford has been working with FareShare for 12 months.
He has also donated the largest single amount to the charity during that time.
As he sought to help further this week, he said: “I am just trying to impact the next generation in a positive way. I have done a lot of work with children and when I heard about the schools shutting down, I knew some kids would not be getting free meals.
“When I was at school, I was on free meals and my mum wouldn’t get home until around six o’clock so my next meal would have been about eight o’clock.
“I was fortunate. There are kids in much more difficult situations who don’t get their meals at home.”
Rashford’s role-model qualities will come as no surprise to his boss, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
The United manager had already seen his work with him on the training ground bear fruit before the curtain went down.
Rashford had collected a season-best 19 goals for his club — plus three more for England — by January 15 when he succumbed to a double stress fracture.
And if Solskjaer wanted to point to anyone when he talks about creating a new culture within Old Trafford then the 22-year-old would be a shining example.
Not that Rashford has ever been a source of concern to Solskjaer.
Nor was he a problem to Jose Mourinho or Louis van Gaal, who gave him his debut in 2016 in a 5-1 Europa League win over Midtjylland.
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Rashford’s stunning double that night made him United’s youngest-ever scorer, ahead of George Best. He then scored two more in his first Prem game, a 3–2 win over Arsenal, and hit the net in his League Cup, Champions League and England debuts.
At the age of 18 years and 141 days, he became the youngest scorer in a Manchester derby in the Prem era, in the 1–0 win over City.
Yet for a long time Rashford was gawky and shy in the spotlight he had sensationally created for himself.
He was always a quiet, studious boy at school and college.
But the gawky boy has now gone, replaced by an articulate, confident young man sure of his place not only as a United striker but also as a role model in society.
Since getting involved with FareShare he has been poring over books on business searching for ways to better help the organisation.
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He already had 3.2m followers on Facebook, 2.5m on Twitter and 8.1m on Instagram.
And thanks to his inspirational intervention last week, pleading for food firms to support needy children through FareShare, he will have at least 600,000 more — the number of kids targeted for support.
He said: “What we’re doing with these meals is another example of the power of football and using your platform.”
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