One amazing little girl and her blog

A nine year old in the UK, Martha, started a blog. She had two goals. The first was to earn money for a charity which helps to feed children in the third world. The second was to improve the meals that her school served up to her and her friends every day. Martha believes that children should eat healthy food.

Every day, she photographed her mid-day meal and gave it marks out of ten. And every day, she posted it, and her news  (“I played a clarinet solo in a concert today after school to celebrate the end of my first year learning to play“) and her lunch. Some dishes received 10 out of 10 but others weren’t so lucky. Martha soon began to receive photographs of school lunches from children all over the world and she’d post these too, often commenting on how good they looked. It’s a brilliant blog. Brilliant.

There are comments from kids and adults all over the world. In May, British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who campaigns for good food in schools, sent her a signed copy of his book.

Yesterday the local council, who are responsible for the school meals, banned Martha from taking photographs of her food. She posted an article on her blog entitled  Goodbye.

Jamie Oliver and another celebrity chef, Nick Nairn, tried to intervene but to no avail. The council said that the little girl was ‘misrepresenting’ the food. How a photograph taken by a nine year old can be a misreprenentation is beyond me. But millions – literally – of people on social media protested about the ban. Hardly surprising that a council censoring a nine year old, who was working towards feeding the hungry and raising awareness for healthy food, was seen as being draconian.

The local council backed down. There were some politicians who suggestedthat Martha should be employed by the local council to teach themhow to use social media. The even better news is that her fund raising efforts had, until the furore, collected £3,000. The influx of visitors due to the explosion on social media raised the amount to over £20,000. A few hours ago the charity tweeted that the little girl’s website had now raised £50,000.

Martha, you are amazing. Youare nine. But you are feeding children in Malawi. You have told the world that our own future depends on feeding our own children healthily and well.

Go Martha