The social campaigning of Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford comes as no surprise to former team-mate Jimmy Dunne.
The Burnley defender played alongside Rashford in Manchester United’s youth system and has explained how, from an early age, the England striker was always ready to take responsibility.
During the coronavirus crisis, the 22-year-old has been campaigning against child food poverty in the UK, for which he was made an MBE.
“One thing I always knew about him was that he would always take responsibility,” Dunne told OTBSports. “I can understand how he feels the need; he has seen something that needs fixing and he’s taken it upon himself to go and fix it.
“He did that on the pitch, when we were 13 or 14 years old and we were losing, Marcus could go and win the game by himself. He would go and take that pressure amongst himself.
“As a lad, he is just the nicest, sweetest kid ever. He never really got carried away, but at the same time he knew how good he was.”
On Wednesday, Rashford launched a fresh petition to end child food poverty, stating that free meals should be expanded to all households on universal credit, which would mean 1.5 million additional children aged seven to 16 would become eligible. He also called for the free school meals scheme to include half-term and the Christmas holidays.
However, a spokesman for the UK Government said: “It's not for schools to regularly provide food to pupils during the school holidays. We took that decision to extend free school meals during the pandemic when schools were partially closed during lockdown. We're in a different position now with schools back open to all pupils.
“We believe the best way to support families outside of term time is through universal credit rather than government subsidising meals.”
Rashford replied with a tweet that said: “Merry Christmas kids. It’s also not for food banks to feed millions of British children but here we are. 250% increase in food poverty and rising.
“This is not going away anytime soon and neither am I.”
His petition has gained close to 200,000 signatures at the time of writing.