Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned lemonade stand?
You’re driving down the street in the summertime and you see a little table on the corner with a sign overhead. Before you’re even close enough to read it, you know what it is, and you start rummaging through your seats for change.
If you were out the weekend of Sept. 9-10 in the area near Second Start, which is on Knight Street, you might have seen one of these set up with a chalkboard sign next to it with an inspiring message written: “Money goes to hurricane Harvey & Irma.”
The lemonade stand was run by sisters Emma and Sadie Pelletier, students at Christa McAuliffe School, and their friend Carden, a Beaver Meadow School student who couldn’t be reached for this story.
It started as an idea in Sadie’s second-grade class. The kids were thinking of ways they could help with the relief efforts in Houston and Florida, and they decided on a lemonade stand.
The Pelletier girls already had plenty of experience with lemonade stands, and they had a fancy new one their grandfather made them for Christmas, so they took on the project.
“We all got together and helped,” said Sadie, 7. “It was a whole class effort.”
Emma, Sadie and Carden manned the stand for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, selling cups of lemonade and Gatorade for $1 apiece, and gave out water for free. The chalkboard sign listed their products, as well as the message that the money would go toward the communities affected by Harvey and Irma.
At the end of the weekend, they had made close to $80 – they couldn’t remember the exact number, but it was definitely more than $60, they said.
“We had a lot of people,” Emma said. “Some gave 20 (dollars), some gave 10.”
The money went into a bucket in Sadie’s classroom and was then sent down south.
And it was all done by kids with single-digit ages.
“Mom helped us set up and Dad helped sort the money,” said Emma, 9.
“We did all the work,” Sadie chimed in, sure to set the record straight.
The girls had held lemonade stands before, but this one was a little different.
“It feels nice how we’re helping them,” Emma said.
The effort isn’t over, either. The girls said they plan on continuing to run the stand on weekends – when there aren’t soccer games, of course – and sending the money down to those who really need it right now.
So if you see this stand when you’re driving around town, don’t be shy about stopping to grab a cup for the road.
