Max Baca, Henry Bradford, Hannah Bradford, Leo Baca, Makenna Villone, Charlie Baca, and Colin Villone at their cookie and lemonade stand.
It’s a mother’s instinct to protect her children but, the day after the Haitian earthquake, I called my three young sons to my side and, together, we watched the ruination unfold. Soon, my attention turned from the television to the boys’ awed faces. Before the next commercial, the boys had dug from their banks fifteen dollars and thirty-one cents to set up a cookie and lemonade stand to raise funds for Haiti.
We invited our fun family friends, the Villones, to make lemonade and signs. The Bradford kids joined us with lunch to share and the Wolfes replenished our cookie supply.
Cars jammed our residential street. Some paid twenty dollars for a single cookie. Some children brought their own pennies. Our kids kept chalk tallies of our earnings on the driveway and wrestled in the grass between customers. The lemonade and cookie stand earned a whopping $389.81 for UNICEF’s Haitian rescue efforts. And our kids learned not only about earning power, but, more importantly, earned the power to make change in the world. They made a stand.
