Marcus Rashford MBE is Manchester United's iconic number 10 and an England International footballer.
To date, the 24-year-old has made over 180 appearances for club, donning the captain’s armband on one occasion, and has racked up 46 caps for country since breaking onto the scene in 2016 when he became the youngest English player to score in his first international match.
In addition to his on-pitch activity, Marcus is renowned globally for being a child food poverty campaigner and best-selling children’s author.
In the Summer of 2020, Marcus began a campaign, named End Child Food Poverty, that would see 1.7 million vulnerable children supported via a £520 million Government investment, in a quest to eradicate child hunger from across the UK. This campaign has been deemed the quickest turnaround of Government policy in the history of British politics. His Parliamentary Petition is 1 of only 5 to ever exceed 1 million signatures.
Along the way, Marcus has formed a Child Food Poverty Taskforce and launched ‘Full Time Meals’ – a nationwide food education and cooking project designed to equip all children with vital life skill, building confidence in the kitchen.
In the year working with Marcus and the Taskforce, food distribution charity FareShare distributed 130 million meals to the most vulnerable across the UK. In May 2020, Marcus became the youngest person to be ranked number one in the Sunday Times Giving List, the newspaper’s annual measure of ‘generosity of those financially best equipped to make a difference’.
In November 2020, Marcus launched the Marcus Rashford Book Club in partnership with Macmillan Children’s Books, aimed to distribute books to an estimated 400,000 children in the UK who had never owned one, working alongside Magic Breakfast and the National Literacy Trust to reach those children most in need. The Book Club is a reader’s recommends programme that champions and celebrates difference, placing representation at the forefront of its mission. Marcus’ debut book ‘You are a Champion’, co-written with Carl Anka, is a children’s Number 1 best seller and was named ‘Book of the Year’ in 2021 by WH Smith and Sainsburys. His ambition to enhance engagement in, and promote, literacy for all children has been commended by book sellers and the publishing industry, recently picking up FutureBook Person of the Year and my Bag Breakthrough Author of the Year.
In July 2020, Marcus received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Manchester, becoming the youngest person to receive the accolade in the history of the establishment. In October 2020, he was appointed MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. In addition, he won a Special Recognition Award at Pride of Britain 2020, was a recipient of the City of Manchester Award, was an inaugural winner of the FIFA Foundation Award, recipient of a Special Award at BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, a recipient of the Football Writers’ Association Tribute Award, and was listed on the TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Next’ list, as well as Forbes ’30 Under 30’ list.
