9-Year-Old's School Lunch Blog Shut Down!

In Scotland, Martha Payne, a 9-year-old girl, began taking pictures of her school lunches and posting them online (at Never Seconds) and commenting about them.

They didn't have the healthiest options and a 9-year-old, all by herself, was speaking out against it.

She hasn't even had the blog up for 2 months and she already got 2 million viewers, articles written about her in newspapers and magazines, including TIME, and then was abruptly shut down.

A political council decided that she was no longer able to bring her camera to school and take pictures.

They claimed she was just making bad decisions in the lunchroom.

What really happened was a local paper made inflammatory statements, condemning the lunchroom staff, something Martha's blog never did.

The council reacted to the paper's article by trying to shut down Martha's ability to continue her blog.

Martha, being the best kid ever, realized she should use her sudden popularity to help others, so she began asking people to make donations to a school-food charity in Africa.

She even gave away money she made from magazine's paying her for her photos.

So after so much backlash and thousands of dollars of donations, the council has reconsidered its stance and will allow Martha to take photos again.

Martha won!

Now she's even teaming up with celebrity chef Nick Nairn to help the council that originally was against her.

The two will work together to help provide more nutritious meals at her school.

Martha's dad said:

"Nick has been involved in promoting healthy food for many years. Martha enjoyed meeting him as did I and his knowledge and enthusiasm are invigorating."

Yay! So hopefully together they can bring about some local change as well as change around the world.

The 9-year-old schoolgirl brought about world change. She raised enough money (around $120,000 as of the writing of this post) through her website's charitable donations that a school in Malawi can build an entirely new kitchen!

Way to go, little gurl!

[Image via Never Seconds.]

Tags: blog, charity, donation, donations, food, girl, health, kid, lunch, magazine, money, news, photo, photos, picture, pictures, school