California girl opened lemonade stand at 8, raised over $100,000 in 6 months
An eight-year-old girl from California raised over $100,000 for anti-slavery organizations by running a lemonade stand for a year. Her campaign was inspired by a photograph of child labor and gained national attention through social media.
Why it matters
It highlights the power of individual grassroots activism and the role of social media in amplifying humanitarian causes.
An eight-year-old girl from Fairfax, California, turned a classic childhood activity into a determined fundraising campaign after one photograph showed her the reality of modern child slavery. Vivienne Harr started a roadside lemonade stand on 25 June 2012. Her goal was to raise $100,000 for groups working to fight slavery. She reached that target in less than six months, but she refused to stop. Instead, she kept the stand open every day for a full year. Her campaign began after she saw a photograph by documentary photographer Lisa Kristine. The image, titled "Brothers Carrying Stone, Nepal", showed two young boys forced to carry heavy granite slabs with straps around their foreheads. The picture deeply affected Harr. Until then, she had believed forced labor was a thing of the past. "I thought slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln," Harr wrote on the Make a Stand website. "I was wrong about that.
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