Children Helping Children

Nine-year-old Vivienne Harr dreams of helping kids halfway around the world and gets down to work. 

Last summer, Vivienne Harr started a lemonade stand with her family to raise money that would go to organizations working to end child slavery. So far, they’ve raised more than $100,000 in six months for Not For Sale, a nonprofit aimed at halting human trafficking. In order to expand into bottling that “lemon aid,” $1 million has been raised and it is now sold through their “for-profit social purpose company,” Make a Stand Inc. For every bottle purchased, either online or at participating stores, half of the profits go to five organizations working to eliminate slavery.

Vivienne will be featured in an upcoming documentary about ending child slavery. The documentary-makers note that her lemonade stand idea was just the kind of big thinking that creates change in the world.

“It was the type of idea that only the spirit of a 9-year-old could pull off,” reads one entry on the Stillmotion production blog. “We adults would have shot it down as absurd, but for Vivienne it wasn’t a matter of if… but rather when she would raise the money.”

In this clip from the Jeff Probst show, Vivienne talks about her lemonade stand.

This web extra provides additional information related to an article titled, “Children Helping Children,” which appeared in the October 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.