8-Year-Old Starts Lemonade Stand for Freedom
Syndicated from goinspirego.blogspot.com, Oct 21, 2012
There’s a sweet twist to this lemonade stand story that will quench your thirst to take a stand to help elevate your community and humanity. Take a sip and read on….
Sometimes the best life lessons can be learned from kids. Kids like Miss Vivienne Harr of Fairfax, Calif. Vivie, as she likes to be called, is a personality-full-cup-runneth-over, 8-year-old philanthropy phenom who set up a lemonade stand – or what I like to call Lemonade Stand 2.0.
Vivie was inspired to take a stand against slavery after seeing an installation on slavery by Lisa Kristine, a photographer who captured these authentic, haunting, gut-wrenching snapshots of modern-day slaves around the world. Vivie was particularly moved by this picture of two Nepalese children carrying huge rocks on their backs.
The family cried in disbelief. They went home and researched slavery and human trafficking.
Vivie was inspired to take action. Watch how she quickly garnered tens of thousands of supporters from the local and worldwide community and raised more than $50,000 dollars in just under two months.
Vivie's project went viral after Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times op-ed columnist, tweeted about @vivienneharr and #MAKEASTAND LEMONADE. She's also been featured on many media outlets including the BBC, Yahoo and is slated to appear on Jeff Probst's talk show, which debuts on Sept. 10.
All the business acumen that Vivie had was selling lemonade. She took a stand and did something – selling lemonade was in her power to be a voice for the voiceless.
Rain or shine, Vivie plans to set up shop and sell her organic, free trade, made-with-love lemonade every day until they raise $150,000 to free 500 slaves.
All of the proceeds will go to NOT FOR SALE, a nonprofit organization that re-abolishes slavery around the world. Won’t you join her and make a stand?
L to R: Toan Lam, Alexandra "Mom" Harr, Vivienne Harr, Jen Schumacher.
Vivie isn't stopping at her $150,000 goal. She's working with investors to bottle her #MAKEASTAND LEMONADE ... stay tuned!
Meanwhile, I’m going to focus on seeing things through a child’s lens more often. Sweet. Cheers!
This article is reprinted here with permission. Toan Lam is the CIO (Chief Inspiration Officer) of www.goinspirego.com (GIG), a nonprofit video-based website that uses social networking to inspire social change and encourages viewers to “Discover and Use Your Power to Help Others” -- on: Twitter & Facebook. First and third photos by Toan Lam, and second photo by Lisa Kristine.
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4 Past Reflections
On Oct 21, 2012 Barb wrote:
I was so very touched by this story. In a world where people seemed to have lost there compassionate, caring selves, this story is so inspiring. It also makes me hopeful about the generations to come.
On Oct 21, 2012 Marc Roth wrote:
Do you wish you could own slaves?
I bet almost nobody looks at this
from the perspective of the slave owner, nor the thousands of people
who would gladly take over as slave owners if the current ones walked
away. What do you put in place to make them stop WANTING to own slaves?
I believe that American homeless might be great ambassadors to the world
if they could take containers full of tools to places where slavery
still exists. Teach these people to be productive with the tools and let
the teachers be humbled and enriched at the same time.
How far away do you have to get from your life in order to find yourself?
On Oct 21, 2012 maheswar wrote:
Amazing! I love her...I shared on all our pages/groups of FB and twitter...I hope we all can learn and feel inspired by her..
On Oct 22, 2012 Arun Solochin (Chikkpp) wrote:
Inspiring, Amazing and Innocent.. That's what a child's work can do.
Thank You for all the effort dear.
Wish You lot of strength and more compassion.
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