There are many things I find amazing about this story. I will highlight a few for you here.
The first is how much support this 9-year-old girl has garnered. Jamie Oliver, a celebrity chef and food activist trying to improve the nutrition offered in England's schools and starter of a food revolution around the globe, stumbled upon Veg's blog and sent a shout-out to her dad on twitter to show his support.
"There have been some comments on the blog saying I am lucky even to get a meal at lunch. You are right.
That's why my friends and I set up Charity Children to raise money for Mary's Meals. We planted plants and
decorated their pots. We made cards, felted soaps, necklaces and friendship bracelets. We sold these at
school and raised £70. I was given £50 by a magazine that wanted to print my pictures so I decided to give it
all to Mary's Meals"
This is an action project that would make any teacher proud, made even more special because it was orchestrated by children out of the goodness of their hearts. When the ruling came out that Veg would no longer be able to continue her blog, she was devastated. And not so much for herself, but that she wouldn't be able to raise enough funds for a new kitchen for Mary's Meals - the cost of which is about £7,000. On June 14, the day her blog was shut down, she had raised just about £2,000. When I checked her total this evening, just three days later, it was £81,992.70. If you want to support Veg's mission, you can donate here.
If you look at the counter widget at the bottom of her blog, you can literally watch it tick. She is at over 5,000,000 visitors, receives hundreds of comments per entry and tons of fan-mail, including pictures of lunches from around the world, which she started adding to her pages. The third thing that amazed me about this story was the way people began rallying for justice on her behalf when the story broke about the ban. She was in a time of need, feeling hopeless about the decision that had just been passed, and her entourage came together to show their support, including Jamie Oliver who tweeted for help from his followers:
What would your action project be?