13-Years-Old Girl Gets Juice Thrown At Her Face, Punched And Even Shown A Knife By Schoolmates Only For Picking Up Litter

Meet Nadia Sparks, a 13-year-old student from Norwich, England, who took on the noble task of picking up trash on her way to school every day to help make the world a better place. Since she started her project, she has picked up over 1100 liters of garbage, much of which has been recycled, and she has inspired countless others to start doing the same.

Nadia is exactly the kind of person we need more of, someone who cares about her community and the Earth that we all share. However, bullies at her school saw her positive behavior as something to use against her, and started taunting her with the name ‘trash girl.’

Undeterred, Nadia turned the bullying on its head by embracing the term, which she said made her sound “like a superhero.” She continued with her cleaning crusade and started up the ‘Team Trash Girl‘ Facebook page, where she encourages others to post their own litter-picking stories.

I wanted to find a way to help everyone support one another, to help fix the planet’s problems before it becomes unfixable,” she writes. “So, please try to pick up 3 pieces of litter today. Show us what you have found. Let’s all support each other to make the world a better place.”

After her story first went viral in 2018, Nadia became an ambassador for the wildlife charity WWF and has won international recognition and awards. She was even immortalized in cartoon form, and, being a keen artist herself, is also publishing her own environment-themed cartoon in a local newspaper.