Marcus Rashford: ‘You’re amazing Zane, thank you’
TEACHER’S SUPERHUMAN EFFORTS TO SUPPORT VULNERABLE FAMILIES PRAISED BY FOOTBALL STAR
MANCHESTER United’s Marcus Rashford has personally thanked hero teacher Zane Powles as he continues his mission to make sure vulnerable families have enough to feed their children.
After a challenging year in which many faced hardship and struggled to get food on the table, Zane Powles has teamed up with local businesses to provide hampers to around 250 families in need this Christmas.
The superhuman effort has seen Zane working away at Western Primary School, where he is assistant headteacher, to get the hampers ready for deliveries which started on Thursday, December 17.
Zane walked miles every day at the height of the coronavirus pandemic to ensure families were getting free school meals for children.
Now, his latest mission to feed children at Christmas has attracted the attention of Marcus Rashford, who campaigns to raise awareness of child hunger in the UK and to provide free meals for children.
In a Tweet, Marcus said: “You’re amazing Zane thank you for everything you do. Your families would be lost without you.”
Mr Powles has delivered 125 of his hampers to other schools who will distribute them to their own communities and as of this morning he had already managed to deliver around 50 to his local community himself.
His efforts will continue over the weekend and overall around 250 hampers will have been delivered to those families in need with the remaining being donated to Women’s Aid. Zane told BBC Humberside: “We’re doing this for families on free school meals and those that are struggling, making sure they have a great Christmas.
“It’s been a rubbish year so it would be good to end the year for our families on a high.
“The families are great anyway and they will do their best for their kids and have a decent meal but I just want it to be better for them.
“I’d put a call out to our families telling them if they were on free school meals they would get it automatically but if there were any others struggling for any reason, we’ll support them as well.”
Eighteen businesses responded to his call for help and he has ploughed a significant sum of his own money into organising the Christmas hampers the families.
Zane told BBC Humberside: “I’m so happy, the companies that supplied this have been so generous and I’m so proud to see Grimsby businesses supporting Grimsby families, there’s nothing better than that.
“They’ve been so generous, amazing amazing people. I mean these are companies that are probably struggling themselves but they’ve still found the money to put forward to support local families and I’m dead proud to be a Grimbarian and really proud that we’ve got companies like that.”
Zane famously spent his summer holidays cycling to all the major castles in the UK, starting and finishing at Ross Castle in Cleethorpes on a gruelling 1,300 mile sponsored bike ride to raise money for Family links Around Grimsby and Meals and More charity which provides support for children during school holidays.
He was also awarded an MBE after walking five miles every day to deliver free school meals to the children that attend his school.
Fittingly it was announced last week that Docks Beers has released a special beer called ‘Miracle Worker’, which honours the Grimsby teacher for all of his hard work through the coronavirus pandemic.