Rashford Enlists Food Giants For Food Poverty Campaign
Manchester United and England star Marcus Rashford has continued his campaign against child food poverty by bringing together some of the country’s biggest food companies to form a new alliance.
The footballer has created a new Child Food Poverty Task Force with the likes of Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Deliveroo, FareShare, Food Foundation, Iceland, Kellogg’s, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Waitrose in a bid to tackle the issue.
According to Rashford, he and each of the businesses will use their platforms to share stories of those children affected by food insecurity in order to raise awareness of the problem.
The move comes after the 22-year-old campaigned for a government U-turn over providing free meal vouchers to school children over the summer holidays, but speaking to BBC Breakfast, Rashford highlighted how this was only a short term measure, and wouldn’t solve the bigger problem.
“We had to think about the best way to do it, to think about how these families can eat long term and not have any issues,” he said. “We wanted to do it the best way we could, introduce the best people into our group, and see if using them [we] can push it even more.”
The Task Force will campaign for three new policy recommendations to be funded by the government, including expanding free school meals to every child from households on Universal Credit or the equivalent, expanding the scheme into school holidays, and increasing the value of the existing Healthy Start vouchers from £3.10 to £4.25 per week.
The measures, if implemented, would see over 1 million more children receive meals.
