Nottingham students raise more than $1,000 for Ukraine by selling lemonade

Fifth graders at Nottingham Elementary School raised more than a thousand dollars, via a lemonade stand, for relief efforts in Ukraine.

The fundraiser, held June 4, raised $1,250 to donate to World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit founded by Chef José Andrés that is providing freshly made meals to people in Ukraine. Students ran the stand as their graduation service project.

The fifth graders sold lemonade and popsicles from around 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on that Saturday. Their stand was decorated in blue and yellow, the national colors of Ukraine, and set up along a sidewalk near the school’s fields.

“We sold a lot of lemonades to baseball teams, a lot of coaches came,” said Juliette Schroeder, one of the fifth graders.

The students led the event largely by themselves, while their parents acted as coordinators.

“I would say this was really kid-run and kid-driven,” parent Alison Grantham said. “We stood back and they ran the lemonade stand and handled the money and everything.”

The fifth graders voted to run a lemonade stand from of a list of idea. The decision was “almost unanimous,” Juliette said. She voted for it because she was interested in helping the people in Ukraine.

“Since I’ve been interested in this conflict myself, I’ve been seeing things on the news,” she said. “There were a bunch of people that have been talking to me about it and I thought it’s interesting to try to do something.”

The students made posters promoting the event and posted them around the neighborhood, while the parents organized the signups, bought the materials and took out a cashier’s check for the money raised, Grantham added.

World Central Kitchen was chosen as the recipient of the funds because the students wanted to provide food assistance to Ukraine, especially warm meals, Juliette said.

“It’s one of the main things of living and honestly, I don’t think I could imagine, like, my world without having warm meal for me every single day,” she said.

Grantham’s daughter, Abby, was at the stand in the morning. Her most memorable moment was when multiple families were waiting around the stand to get lemonade.

“It was a very hectic moment, but it was also very nice, because they all wanted to come and support Ukraine,” Abby said.