The Ripple Effect

Liz and I do a lot of public speaking and we were lucky enough to be invited back to speak at a camp called Girls Take Charge (http://girlstakecharge.org). Girls Take Charge is a national award winning leadership development program designed to inspire and empower high school and middle school-aged girls to become self-confident, courageous and compassionate leaders in their communities. Further, with this leadership development it encourages them to become lifelong leaders!

Before the session started we were approached by a college student and their mother. This student had attended a leadership camp we spoke at a few years ago, and told us how much Alex’s story had influenced his life. He then shared that his college entrance essay was about Alex and credited his admission to this essay. It was a very nice moment for us.

For Liz and I, it is exciting to think that we might have a small part in helping these students become leaders in their life.

At these camps we typically speak about Alex, how she started her lemonade stand movement and the lessons we learned from her along the way. Beth Mooney who runs the camp always does a great job (in fact, we are working with her on a Leadership Academy of our own. Click this link for details www.alexslemonade.org/campaign/student-leadership-academy-2010).

While I was in a meeting yesterday an employee came to tell me that someone was in our office and wanted to see me. I went out and introduced myself to a mother, her 7-year-old son Nikolas, and Nikolas’ grandmother. This mother told me that her daughter came home from Girls Take Charge Camp and told the family the story of Alex and her lemonade stands and that the campers set up lemonade stands across the campus of Villanova University for an hour and raised over $1,000! She told her family how inspired she was.

Well, there was one more surprise for me. After hearing his sister talk about Alex’s Lemonade and what she had done at camp, Nikolas went to his room and took a $5 bill from his bank and told his mother he wanted to give it to Alex’s Lemonade Stand. A big thank you to Nikolas, I would say that not only do “girls take charge,” but “kids take charge.” Remember that out of the $30 million dollars plus that ALSF has raised, over $12 million has been raised from lemonade stands, most of them with kids working at them. Pretty cool. What do you think?



- Jay Scott, Alex's dad

p.s.- if you would like to match Nikolas' $5 donation to ALSF, just text the word 'cancer' to 85944 from your cell phone.