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Marcus Rashford has appealed to the public to support his campaign for food poverty, saying that showing compassion and empathy towards the poorest children in society is part of “what it means to be British.”
The soccer player asked people to be generous and help instead of judging the children of families that have gone through difficult times.
“Whatever your feeling, opinion or judgment, food poverty is never the child’s fault,” he said. “Let’s protect our young people. Let’s embrace and unite to say that this is unacceptable, that we are united to protect our children.
“Today millions of children are in the most vulnerable settings and are beginning to question what it really means to be British. Today I ask everyone to help me show them that being British is something to be proud of. “
Rashford has launched an online petition calling on the government to extend free school meals to 1.5 million more young people from struggling families. Around 1.4 million children were claiming free school lunches before the pandemic, and nearly a million are estimated to have recently signed up in recent weeks.
Rashford, who was awarded an MBE over the weekend for services to vulnerable children, has become a prodigious anti-poverty activist, forcing a government U-turn on holiday food vouchers in June and backing the Monday a cross-party parliamentary bill to finance free breakfast provision to schools in disadvantaged areas.
His latest initiative is likely to increase pressure on the government to do more for hundreds of thousands of struggling families who are in distress and facing food insecurity as a result of the Covid crisis.
The Welsh government announced on Thursday that it would guarantee the provision of free school meals for all school holidays up to and including Easter 2021 at a cost of £ 11 million. His education minister, Kirsty Williams, said she hoped this would provide “some reassurance [for parents] in these uncertain times ”.
Although the pandemic has exacerbated child food poverty in the UK, Rashford said the problem predated the pandemic and the current debate on ensuring children had enough to eat had been long overdue.
“Right now, a generation that was already sanctioned during this pandemic for lack of access to educational resources, is now back in school struggling to focus due to worry and the noise of their rumbling stomachs, ”he said.
A new analysis suggests that almost one in five UK children between the ages of eight and 15 experienced food insecurity during the summer holidays.
The Food Foundation’s survey of more than 1,000 children found that 18% had reported experiencing at least one indicator of food insecurity, which included being hungry but not eating due to lack of food, parents not eating due to lack of food, lack of food or eating at a friend’s house. home for lack of food at home.
It is understood that the ministers have no plans to extend the meal voucher program for the school holidays during the next fall semester.
A government spokesperson said: “We have taken substantial steps to ensure that children and their families do not go hungry during this pandemic, extending support for free school meals to those eligible when schools were partially closed during closure, increasing the universal credit by up to £ 20. per week, funding councils to provide emergency assistance to families with food, staples and meals and allocating £ 63 million to municipalities that distribute it to those in need. “
