One day, 10-year-old Vivienne Harr was stunned by a photograph she saw in a magazine.
It was an image of two young boys in Nepal carrying rock slabs strapped to their heads.
According to the photographer, Lisa Kristine:
“Many of them come from families where everyone is trapped in debt bondage slavery. One of the mothers describes what it was like to be in slavery, ‘Neither can we die, nor can we survive.’”
Vivienne felt compelled to help. The question was: How?
There are 30 million people living in modern-day slavery throughout the world. Surely, a 10-year-old girl couldn’t help them all. But Vivienne wanted to do something, so she set a starting goal of helping to free 500 children, which, according to her father, would cost about $100,000.
So she used the only business experience she had to raise the money: selling freshly-squeezed lemonade from a roadside stand.
She ran her lemonade stand for 173 days and raised over $300,000 — three times her original goal!
Now, with the support of her family and some big time partners, they’re growing the business — and their impact on the issue of slavery — by bottling Vivienne’s lemonade and getting it into grocery stores around the country.
The company, Make A Stand, has been established as a B-corporation with 5% of their net revenues going to efforts to end child slavery.
A B-corporation, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a benefit corporation. It’s a model that “uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” And a lot of people, including Vivienne’s dad, are excited about the possibilities.
Vivienne’s story is a testament to both the power of one and the importance of community when it comes to the toughest challenges in the world.
And it’s also a great example of how more businesses should work.
Watch Vivienne’s story below:
