A nine-year-old Scotland girl, Martha Payne, got into trouble when the local newspaper ran a headline about her food blog that featured photos of the meals served at her school and the small minds of the school board banned her from publishing any new photos. That got the blogosphere riled up. Soon the small minds were backpedaling away from the ban as the controversy attracted the attention of political higher ups. On top of that, she was also raising money to feed children in Malawi.

Publicity caused by the ban helped the schoolgirl smash through her £7,000 fundraising target for the Mary’s Meals charity – with total pledges of more than £30,000 being made by Friday afternoon.

The total stood at only about £2,000 on Thursday evening.

A Mary’s Meals spokesman said: “We are overwhelmed by the huge response to her efforts today which has led to so many more people donating to her online donation page.

“Thanks to this fantastic support, Martha has now raised enough money to build a kitchen in Malawi for children receiving Mary’s Meals as part of our Sponsor A School initiative and has broken the record for hitting a Sponsor A School online fundraising target in the quickest amount of time”.

Thanks to the small minds of the school board, Mary’s Meals will have more than enough money to open kitchens to feed as many children as possible.