Rashford’s campaign against child poverty leads to Iceland giving away free vegetables

England and Manchester United star Marcus Rashford has been campaigning for free school meal vouchers to be provided to students over the summer period. Rashford has been campaigning hard and joined hands with multiple companies like Aldi, Asda, Deliveroo, FareShare, Food Foundation, Iceland, Kellogg’s, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and a few others. These organizations are now teaming up to form the Child Food Poverty Task Force, which has been Rashford's primary objective.

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Marcus Rashford campaign against child poverty leads to Iceland giving away free vegetables

British supermarket chain Iceland has announced support for the Marcus Rashford campaign to end child food poverty. Iceland announced that as part of the campaign it will be offering a free bag of frozen vegetables amounting to £1 to those shopping using the Healthy Start vouchers. Speaking about the initiative, Marcus Rashford said in his statement: “My hope on forming the Child Food Poverty Task Force was that it would ignite conversation relating to the issue – why is this happening? How is this happening? And, are we really doing everything we can to help? and Iceland’s new initiative grew out of that conversation and it really shows how the simplest step can have an impact.”

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British chain Iceland said that the frozen vegetable offer will begin on Friday, September 11 and the supermarket chain will observe the project and will report its findings back to the Food Foundation, the Government of UK and to Marcus Rashford.

Speaking about the initiative through an official statement, Richard Walker, who is the managing director of Iceland Foods, said: “We are proud to stand alongside Marcus Rashford as he continues this vital campaign, and we understand the pressing need to help from our interactions with millions of customers each week. We were keen to implement initiatives as soon as possible, without waiting for the Government to respond, which is why we have introduced our frozen vegetable offer.

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The task force is endorsing three national food strategy policy recommendations including increasing the value of the Healthy Start vouchers from £3.10 per week to £4.25 and extending it to everyone on Universal Credit or equivalent. The other two are the expansion of free school meals to every child from a household on Universal Credit or equivalent and the expansion of school holiday food and activities programmes to support all children on free school meals.

Nations League: Iceland vs England

One the one hand, the England-based company Iceland is taking an initiative to tackle hunger issues, and on the other, the nations of Iceland and England will lock horns in a Nations League match. The Three Lions finished third last time in a campaign that saw Portugal lifting the trophy after beating the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Iceland will look to give some tough competition and upset the heavyweights. The match will be played behind closed doors at Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavík. The two teams will be joined by Belgium and Denmark in the group. 

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Image credits: Marcus Rashford Twitter