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Marcus Rashford’s extraordinary campaign to provide free meals to poor and vulnerable children in England during the school holidays has prompted an outpouring of support up and down the country from all sectors of the community. The hospitality industry, itself so badly hit under the pandemic has rallied behind the footballer’s campaign with individuals and businesses providing food for struggling children and families; overwhelmed by this generosity Rashford commented that `I couldn’t be more proud to call myself British’. Like most crises, this pandemic too has revealed the best and worst of a nation’s character. But if the effects of the pandemic continuously shine a light on the growing social, cultural and educational inequalities in the UK, this should stir our intelligence as well as our emotions. On the one hand there is nothing as simple and as profound as feeding someone who is hungry; infect in Islam some might regard this as the essence of faith itself that when the Prophet was asked `what is faith?’ he replied `the giving of food and the exchange of greetings.’ Such acts offer much needed temporary hope, but there’s a danger that they also detract from the deeper structural causes of poverty and deprivation. The plight of those children whose lives are blighted by hunger is not a new global phenomenon so it shouldn’t take a pandemic for us to wake up to the issue. Hungry children often live with adults who also go hungry, hungry children remain distracted and underperform at school and most poignantly as the saying goes, you cannot tell a hungry child you gave him food yesterday. The most damaging consequence of poverty is that it takes away a person’s freedom and paves the way for greater injustices, For all its merits charity can only achieve so much, what I believe is required is a reconstruction of a fairer society in which self worth is a given and not an aspiration , where everyone can live with dignity and not pity. In Mitch Albom’s best-selling memoir, Tuesdays with Morrie, the dying professor Morrie's advice is `Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” Today, we’re seeing many examples of people doing just that – living with hope and giving others hope. This could be the kind of faith we can all share.