(Community Matters) Today is Lemonade Day – in Austin, over 10,000 kids have registered to host lemonade stands all around the city, launching their entrepreneurial careers.
While these kids are having fun, they’ve also been learning about entrepreneurship without even knowing it – their cartoon-style lemonade stand guide is actually a well-researched, produced curriculum developed with assistance from the Search Institute. As parents or mentors guide the kids in establishing and running their stands, they are learning about planning, budgeting, marketing, accounting (counting revenues, costs & profits) and philanthropy. The latter is completely voluntary – some parents and partner organizations are encouraging children to share portions of their profits with charitable organizations.
Leigh Christie has done an extraordinary job leading this program in Austin for the Entrepreneurs Foundation. Andra & Joe Liemandt, their Liemandt Family Foundation and Trilogy are the primary underwriters in Austin joined by Imperial Sugar, HEB, RunTex, Charles Schwab, the Acton Foundation, the Buena Vista Foundation and others. Peter Frey has been Leigh’s right hand man while simultaneously holding down plenty of EF responsibilities.
Prepare4Life & Michael Holthouse created and launched this program in Houston 3 years ago. We’re pretty dang proud that our first and second years we’ve met the enrollment and participation figures of the nation’s 3rd largest city. Additionally, in Austin, we’ve engaged Prof Raphael Travis to help us evaluate outcomes (stands, revenues, profits and philanthropy) as well as help us design and test a possible long term longitudinal study to confirm whether this program impacts future entrepreneurial activity and whether it contributes to participants’ developmental assets.
Community Matters 