|
 Hot sun, cold lemonade, and summer days are a winning combination that many an ambitious child has turned into a thriving business.
But for the Dempsey family, lemonade stands mean even more. For the Dempsey kids, ages 8, 6, and 3, lemonade stands mean a blessing for those in need.
“The kids did two things,” says Jennifer Dempsey, their mother, “a lemonade stand and a yard sale. I told them that they should share the lemonade stand money with people in need but that they could do whatever they liked with the yard sale money.”
In the end, the kids decided that what they liked was to share even more than their mother required.
“I decided to also use part of my yard sale money, so my brothers decided they would, too,” explains Isabel, age 8, leader of the pack.
In an effort to make the experience more meaningful to her children, Jennifer took them shopping to pick out the items that they wanted to share with the Samaritan Center’s Community Food Pantry.
“I had seen in our church newsletter that the Samaritan Center needed macaroni and cheese, so we got that. Then Isabel wanted to buy baby food, too,” Jennifer remembers.
In the end, younger brothers Chandler and Reid rounded out their purchase of essentials by adding two Hot Wheels cars to the mix.
“We got money and used money to buy stuff and then brought it here so other people could have stuff, too,” Chandler, age 6, summarizes his experience.
As Chandler speaks, Jennifer looks on with a smile. She knows that the kids’ lemonade stand and yard sale experiments have yielded more than just capitalistic know-how—their experiments have also yielded a desire to share with others.
|
