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9-Year-Old Raises $3,000 From Lemonade Stand to Help Detroit

  • Spence Cooper
  • August 13, 2012

When 9-year-old Joshua Smith heard on the radio that Detroit was broke, he set up a lemonade stand in front his family’s house to raise money for the Motor City, which has drastically cut back on services, and laid off workers to ease its financial burden.

“I heard the city was in crisis because the city is broke, and I was really upset,” Joshua said. [see video of Joshua]

Joshua planned to ask city officials to use the proceeds from his stand to maintain a park and playground near the family’s home in the city’s Russell Woods neighborhood.

Joshua’s parents permitted him to set the prices at his stand and offered water for $1.00, lemonade and punch for $1.50, and popcorn in small, medium and large sizes for $1.00, $1.50 and $2 a bag.

Joshua’s mother, Rhonda Smith, posted news of the sale on Facebook, and Joshua made and distributed fliers in the neighborhood and at a recent jazz festival.

The flier says: “May you please help the City of Detroit. Please buy this popcorn and drinks. It’s not so expensive. I didn’t make it expensive so you would have to spend all your money. The money will help clean up trash on the ground and cut the grass in the parks.”

NewsTalkCleveland.com reported that by the time the booth ended its run, Joshua had raised more than $3,340, received an award for outstanding achievement from Detroit City Council, welcomed members of the University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team and earned a $2,000 award for college from the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation.

Contributions came from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

Parents Flynn and Rhonda Smith, both 43, said they decided not to tell Joshua that a lemonade sale, no matter how successful, would hardly put a dent in the city’s deficit, which is in excess of $100 million.

“I’m really proud of him. He wasn’t asking how can he make money to buy himself something. My wife and I were talking about this earlier: Neither of us ever thought to do anything like this when we were kids,” said Flynn Smith, Joshua’s father, a high school math teacher and associate pastor at Evangel Ministries.

9-Year-Old Raises ,000 From Lemonade Stand to Help Detroit“He’s always been a conscientious child about what’s going on around him, and we want to encourage him with whatever he wants to do as long as it’s positive and God honoring,” Rhonda, Joshua’s mother, told USAToday.

Kim Trent, a childhood friend of Joshua’s mother posted a notice about Joshua’s sale on her Facebook page and heard from friends across the country.

“I posted it, and my friends posted it. I had friends as far as Oregon asking how they could contribute,” Trent said. She stopped to buy popcorn and water on her way home from work.

Joshua dictated and sent a letter to Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing with the money that he raised. The letter read:

“Dear Mr. Mayor, I’m sending this money because I hear the city is broke and I’m hoping to raise $1,000 or more so we can have lots of money, so we can cut grass and fix the water fountains in the park.”

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