Marcus Rashford is a professional football player who plays in the English Premier league for Manchester United Football Club and plays for the England national team.
Marcus who was born on the 31st of October 1997 signed for Manchester United at age seven. In 2016 he made his senior debut for Man U in a UEFA Europa League match where he scored two goals, three days later he made his Premier League debut also scoring two goals.
Rashford had a habit of scoring in his debuts as he scored in his first Manchester derby, EFL Cup debut, Champions League debut and his first senior appearance for the Three Lions where he became the youngest English player to score on his debut.
Manchester’s number 10 has made himself a household name on and off the pitch and has made himself a regular in both United’s and England’s teams. To date Rashford has made 198 appearances for the Red Devils scoring 59 times. He’s also been awarded 46 caps and managing to find the back of the net 12 times.
At the age of just 24 Marcus already has an impressive trophy collection winning the; Europa League, FA Cup, English League Cup, and the FA Community Shield.
Even though his footballing career has been exceptional its off the pitch where I believe Rashford deserves the most credit. Rashford has used his platform to make positive changes in his own local as well as across the UK by using his social media platforms and his voice in the media to voice his opinions and the opinions of the most venerable in the United Kingdom.
His activism, charity, and campaign work throughout his years as a professional footballer has made him a massive and popular public figure, he used his platforms to help make positive changes in people’s lives such as campaigning against Racism, Homelessness and Child hunger.
Even though all his campaign efforts have been important the Child Hunger campaign was most poignant and successful.
This political issue is very close to Marcus’s heart as he grew up in a single parent household with his mum Melanie Maynard who had to work multiple jobs to make sure that him and his siblings didn’t go without food.
Rashford’s first participation in charitable work came in October 2019 where he teamed up with Selfridges Box campaign which gave homeless people help over Christmas.
His Child Hunger campaigning started March 2020 during the COVID 19 lockdown. He teamed up with poverty and food waste charity Fareshare to deliver food to Greater Manchester families who wasn’t receiving free school meals because of the lockdown.
On the 11th of November Rashford announced that the initiative delivered three million meals across the country. This number rose an additional one million the following month.
25th June 2020 saw the United player send an open letter to the UK government asking them to end child poverty. As a result of his media presence the next day he had a result as the government changed policy and kids received meals over the summer holiday.
Rashford wasn’t finished there once again he used his social media platforms (twitter being the main platform) to go even further.
In October 2020 the English international was awarded with is (MBE) and a week later he started an online petition to end child food poverty. Because of his stature and media presence the petition went viral and became only the sixth petition in the UK to receive over one million signatures.
As a result of this the British government provided over 400 million pounds over the following twelve months to support costs of food and household bills for poor families.
Just from using his voice and social media platforms Marcus Rashford took on the UK government and forced change. He used his platform for positive change and helped improve millions of families lives.
As a result, Rashford has won numerous awards for his activism and charitable work which includes awards such as honorary Doctorate from the University of Manchester in July 2020, Special recognition award in the 2020 Pride of Britain awards, he won the 2020 FIFA foundation award and The Guardian footballer of the year award in January 2021 because of his campaign against child hunger.
Marcus Rashford is the perfect example of an athlete who uses his status and media presence to inflict positive changes to society and through social media platforms he was able to voice his and others’ opinions to an entire nation.
Rashford's timeline:
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