Since Kirsty Small won a Respect Award For Taking A Stand, she's become something of a hero, with people everywhere admiring her strength and courage. But Kirsty knows all about what it's like to be the victim of bullying...
I have a mole on my face and since I was little, the kids at school made fun of me for it. I learned to rise above it though, you can't let people like that get you down.
Intimidated by gangs
On the council estate where I live in Baldock, you used to see vandalism all over the place and the gangs hanging around the streets would scare people so much they avoided walking past them.
“They'd shout all kinds of horrilbe stuff”
When my friend, Siobhan, started doing a paper round they started on her.
They'd shout all kinds of horrible stuff and threatened her whenever they saw her with the paper-delivery bag. In the end, Siobhan got so scared she was thinking about quitting.
"We can't let them win," I told her. "You want to deliver the papers and the people you deliver them to want to read them. We'll do the paper round together and show them that we won't put up with being terrorised!"
The fight was on
At first things were really tough. We were always looking over shoulders for the gang. If they saw us they'd pull the bags off us and run off with the papers. One time they even set fire to them and I burned my hands trying to put them out.
A lot of the adults on the estate were scared to talk to the police because they were scared that the gang would take revenge on them, but someone had to take a stand or they'd just carry on ruining our area.
“someone had to take a stand or they'd ruin our area”
I decided to report everything to the police. I thought people should know about what was going on, so I spoke to the local newspaper and they printed an article about it.
I wanted to send a message out to the gang that we weren't going to silently let them get away with their bullying any longer.
From then on, things started getting better.
The police listened to what I'd said and took action. But what was even better was that people on the estate started to stand up to the gang too.
Our community police officer set up a Residents Association, so local people could join together to make our area nicer, and I was elected as a youth representative.
I feel so proud to have done something for my community, the estate is much safer now, people say they hardly recognise it!
But my proudest moment of all came when I received a Special Young Person's Respect Award from the Home Secretary, John Reid.
Respect due!
At the ceremony, he said, "These awards are a fitting way to recognise these extraordinary people."
“I hope my story will inspire other teenagers”
Me, extraordinary! It was so exciting.
Really, I'm just a normal girl. But since the award, I've been interviewed by lots of newspapers and magazines - and now Slink!
I hope my story will inspire other teenagers to stand up to yobs where they live. It is possible to make a difference - I did, maybe you could too.
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