This young lady is attracting a national audience who believes in her mission.
Mari Copeny, the 15-year-old clean water activist known as “Little Miss Flint,” appeared on a recent episode of The Tamron Hall Show where fans saw her get emotional during a segment where she was promoting her annual holiday fundraiser and toy drive.
Copeny is an activist and philanthropist who has been bringing awareness to the Flint Water Crisis
since 2015. She has been coordinating fundraisers to provide toys for families in Flint to gift to their children through her annual toy drive.During the segment
, Copeny shared with the audience the difficulty she has experienced trying to get donations.“I’m sorry. It’s just been really hard to try and get money and stuff for this event because people haven’t been treating me very nice and it’s been really hard,” she said through the tears while being comforted by Hall and actor and activist Kendrick Sampson.
Copeny opened up to her followers about the pressure to meet the goal in under a week.
After people learned of the pressure she was under, donations started to roll in for Little Miss Flint. With a GoFundMe goal of $25,000, supporters donated $67,361.
“In 24 hours y’all not only met my goal, but doubled it,” she tweeted.
“You just helped me make Christmas even more magical for the kids in my community who go without more often then not. Thank you so much. Only happy tears over here tonight.”
“Every year I try to outdo myself from the previous year,” she wrote on her Team Marie Christmas 2022 GoFundMe page.
“I love Christmas, and being able to spread the magic of Christmas to other kids is my favorite thing to do.”
Copeny returned to Twitter to update followers on the successful results from this year’s toy drive
.Singer Lizzo recognized Little Miss Flint during her acceptance speech for her People’s Champion Award at this year’s 2022 People’s Choice Award.
The public first learned of Copeny and her activism after she wrote a letter to former President Barack Obama about the water crisis, where he visited and approved $100 million dollars in relief for the city in 2016.