Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford has spoken of the “drive and motivation” of his family’s struggles when he was younger, with the footballer recalling his experiences with food poverty alongside his mother Melanie.
Rashford has been the driving force behind a campaign to feed young children this year, with the 23-year-old at times at loggerheads with government officials including Prime Minister Boris Johnson over increasing the availability of free school meal vouchers.
He originally joined forces with food poverty charity FareShare at the start of the year with the aim of helping to feed the vulnerable, but his campaign rocketed thanks to the help of big-name donators and widespread supporters as well as his relentless approach to putting the focus on helping those in need.
Rashford will feature on BBC One on Monday night to reveal some of the work that has gone on, where he will appear in ‘Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children’ alongside his mother.
And ahead of the show - which will cme 24 hours after he receives a special award for his work at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony - Rashford has spoken about how his own experiences have not only shaped his desire to help others, but also his relentless approach on the field to make the best of his abilities with United and England.
“All the little struggles and the sacrifices that you made, it helps you appreciate everything like 10 times more, so I don’t see it as a weakness,” Rashford told BBC Breakfast.
“I think in sport you have to have something behind you that is pushing you. When you come from a place of struggle and pain a lot of the time it switches and it becomes your drive and motivation.”
Rashford credits his mother with giving him that motivation, having seen the lengths she went through to ensure that her family was fed when they were younger that sometimes came at the expense of her own wellbeing.
“I had three jobs and if I didn’t do that we wouldn’t have been able to cook a pot of food, it’s just a bit difficult,” Melanie said.
“So Marcus is only telling the story from how he sees it and the words he has been saying come from the bottom of his heart.
“Sometimes it was really bad, I’d rather give the food to the kids than give it to myself, sometimes I didn’t get anything to eat. Sometimes we didn’t even have a loaf of bread in the house, it’s embarrassing to say, but we didn’t.”
As part of the show, Rashford joins his mother on a trip to FareShare where it was first revealed to her that the food charity had named one of its new units in her honour as ‘Melanie Maynard House, with Rashford’s support credited for the emotional gesture.
Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children is on BBC One on Monday, December 21 from 7pm.
