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Food

This 6-Year-Old’s Lemonade Stand Raised $13,000 for Separated Immigrant Children

When life gives you lemons, raise a ton of money for immigrants.
Ian Burke
Brooklyn, US
Photo via Flickr user amy gizienski

Raising money for a good cause is a commendable thing to do at any age, but for six-year-old children, opportunities to organize big-time fundraising events are few and far between… Or so we thought. The answer? A good old-fashioned lemonade stand.

In an all-American way to combat a shamefully un-American issue, a six-year-old boy opened a lemonade stand in Atlanta, Georgia to raise money to help the children forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexican border.

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When Shannon Cofrin Gaggero, a mother of two, explained what was happening to immigrant families at the border, her six-year-old was eager to help. Gaggero set a goal of $1,000 for the online and in-person lemonade stand fundraising campaign—a number she thought was realistic. And, as it turns out, it was very realistic. In just three hours, the fundraiser hit the $1,000 goal. Six days later, it reached a whopping $13,000.

All of the Gaggero’s proceeds will benefit the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service (RAICES), a Texas nonprofit organization that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants.

In the hopes of starting to help the organization as soon as possible, Gaggero chose to close the online campaign after it reached $13,000 in order to circumvent Facebook’s two-week payout system for fundraisers.

A quick, final disclaimer for any kids who might be reading this: Not all lemonade stand proprietors make $13,000 a week. Stay in school.