SCHOOLGIRL Martha Payne won the Public Campaigner of the Year award after raising more than £120,000 for children in Malawi in a school dinners blog which her local council tried to ban.
Nine-year-old Martha, from Lochgilphead, Argyll, set out to raise funds for the charity Mary's Meals in April with a blog in which she posted daily reviews of the lunches served up at her school, accompanied by a picture of the meal.
The blog, NeverSeconds, raised around £2000 in its first month and garnered column inches in Scottish and national press about the standard of school dinners across the country.
In June, six weeks after Martha set up the blog, she was told by Argyll and Bute Council she could no longer take photographs of her lunches as media coverage apparently left catering staff fearing for their jobs.
The ban left Martha concerned she would not be able to raise enough money for a kitchen for Mary's Meals and sparked a barrage of negative publicity for the council, which backtracked on its decision.
In the meantime, donations to her JustGiving page rocketed to £20,000 – more than enough for a new kitchen – and has now climbed to £114,000.
In October, Martha and her family travelled to Malawi to see the kitchen shelter built at Lirangwe School in Blantyre, Malawi, with some of the money she raised.
She also met children who will receive a meal from Mary's Meals for a whole school year thanks to her blog.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article