Marcus Rashford, Soccer’s Advocate for Hungry Kids
His Twitter campaign helped shame the U.K. government into providing free school meals to more than 1.5 million children from low-wage families.
Rashford
Photographer: Daniel Leal Olivas/Getty Images
The 23-year-old, one of the Premier League’s brightest young stars, spent much of the summer working to ensure that kids from a poor upbringing have access to free school meals during scheduled and unscheduled closures. In June a groundswell of public support for his cause got the government to spend £120 million ($159 million) to extend a voucher scheme that it hadn’t intended to keep funding. In an open letter to Parliament that Rashford posted on Twitter, he wrote, “I encourage you to hear their pleas and find your humanity.” The tweet got more than 300,000 likes.
The government’s about-face was humbling for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who saluted Rashford’s pertinacity in announcing the extension. Since then, Rashford’s doggedness has seen Johnson’s government backtrack for a second time and pledge more than £400 million in further support through 2021.