Marcus Rashford becomes youngest person to top Giving List after raising £20million to fight child poverty

Marcus Rashford has become the youngest person to ever top the Sunday Times Giving List after raising £20,000,000 to help end child poverty.

The Manchester United striker was first recognised for his charitability last year when he was able to change the course of the UK Government’s decision to provide free meals for underprivileged children during the summer school holidays.

A few months later in October, he also launched a petition urging the Government to again extend free school meals through the half-term and Christmas holidays, eventually pressuring ministers into providing £170million of extra funding.

Boris Johnson had initially vowed not to extend the free school meals voucher system into the summer holidays while disadvantaged children were stuck at home during lockdown.

But he retracted this on June 16th,  just two days after Rashford had called on his cabinet to reconsider the decision in an open letter.

Rashford, who received free school meals himself as a child, was made an MBE in the delayed 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

And now, nearly one year on, he has officially topped the Sunday Times Giving List, a system that ranks philanthropists by comparing their sums raised for charity against their net worth on the Sunday Times Rich List.

With a personal worth of £16million, Rashford managed to raise a staggering 125% of his net worth over the past year, and helped charity FareShare distribute 4 million meals to disadvantaged children.

FareShare chief executive Lindsay Boswell said the footballer’s commitment to tackling child hunger ‘has simply been incredible’. 

She told Metro: “His own experience of relying on free school meals to eat brings authenticity and compassion to his campaigning, and his status as a Premier League footballer means people and politicians sit up and take notice.”

On the list, Rashford was joined by a fellow footballer – Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, who ranked sixth after raising £4,000,000 for the NHS through the #PlayersTogether appeal.