Lemonade Day is an awesome nonprofit organization that‘s helping kids and their parents learn the skills to become successful entrepreneurs that our education system doesn’t teach. Last month, I had the opportunity to hear Lemonade Day’s co-founder Michael Holthouse talk at TEDx Houston on Entitlement in America. At TEDx Houston, Michael said: “If you know we should teach a man to fish instead of give a man fish’ why aren’t we doing that in America?†Last night, Mandy had the opportunity to share some of the reasons why this was such a momentous task with the NetSquared group.
Mandy shared some of the key challenges she faces trying to help market and promote Lemonade Day like how to get kids to register and participate, learn from each other online, and improve their program’s educational content that teaches kids how to be entrepreneurs. One of the tools Lemonade Day has created is a workbook with 14 lessons on entrepreneurship and business management. The workbook and resources are all free for kids who want to participate in the program.
After telling us about Lemonade Day’s web marketing campaign, Mandy went on to tell us stories of some of the kids who have built lemonade stands and the reasons why these kids were motivated to start their Lemonade Stand Businesses. She explained that Lemonade Day isn’t just about entrepreneurship’ the organization also helps kids raise money for things like a memorial in the community for a child lost to a tragic car accident and transportation for a young friend to his cancer treatment center. Lemonade Day enables kids to make a difference in their world around them.
Mandy concludes the NetSquared evening by telling us what we can do to help. Lemonade Day has a goal of registering 1 million kids in over 100 cities in the next 2 years. Most of the kids that can best be helped by Lemonade Day don’t have access to the internet as easily and don’t have email accounts and mobile phones. Lemonade Day relies heavily on volunteers who will go out to schools to teach and help register kids. If you can’ volunteer to go to a local school and spend 20 or 30minutes teaching one of the lessons from the workbook.
On Lemonade Day’s website you will also find resources and details about upcoming competitions, recipes for Lemonade, instructions for building a lemonade stand and more.
Connect online with Lemonade Day on Facebook, follow @lemonadeday on twitter, find videos on Lemonade Day’s Youtube channel, and share photos of Lemonade Day stands and competitions on their Flickr photostream.