The winner of our blog award tells us she was motivated by an interest in what we at OFM regard the most noble of professions. "I wanted to do some journalism," says nine-year-old Martha Payne, from Lochgilphead in Argyll. And she knew exactly what she wanted her journalism to be about. "I was always coming home from school and telling my dad I was hungry and he didn't understand why." A blog reviewing her school meals would explain everything. Her dad David, who looks after the family smallholding, set Martha up with the blog and cleared it with the school. It launched in May and has become a global phenomenon. "I thought it would just be friends and family who would see it," Martha says. At time of writing it has been visited by nearly 8.1 million people.
The blog, Never Seconds, went viral after one of her first photographs received 25,000 hits. "That's when I had to alert the school," David Payne says. Not all of Martha's reporting was negative. The macaroni cheese scored well, the vegetable spring rolls less so. But she was now getting emails from children around the world wanting to talk about what they ate at school. In June she also set up a page to raise money for the charity Mary's Meals, which helps feed school kids in Malawi. "Somebody had written to me to say that I should just be grateful I had any food to eat because not everyone does," Martha says. Quickly she had raised £2,000.
All of that almost came to an end two weeks later, after the Daily Record ran a story headlined "Time to fire the dinner ladies". Within a couple of days Argyll and Bute Council claimed staff were in fear of losing their jobs and Martha was told she could no longer take photographs. A storm broke out across Twitter that day and by lunchtime the council leader was on Radio 4 withdrawing the ban. At the same time people piled on to Martha's Just Giving page. To date she has raised more than £114,000. "It's enough to keep 10,000 children fed for a year," David says.
When we spoke, she was preparing to go to Malawi to see how the money is being used. "I'm going to be writing about all of it." Her ambitions for the future? "I definitely want to be a journalist when I grow up," she says.
Martha, we think you'll go far.
Also highly commended
Hollow legs (lizzieeatslondon.blogspot.co.uk);
James Ramsden (jamesramsden.com)
