Emotional Pro

11-year old Crusader Vivienne Harr joins Ilene to tell her story about working to end Child Slavery. We’re also pleased to have students from Mary Hill Midtown School in Sacramento, California. These students are studying Financial Literacy and have read Vivienne’s book, “Make A Stand”. Today they listen to Vivienne’s story and get a chance to ask their own questions.

When Eric Harr was a kid, he made $9 one day from selling lemonade. He thought that was totally cool. Thirty years later, his daughter Vivienne set up a lemonade stand in Fairfax and did considerably better. Over 173 consecutive days, she took in $101,320. Vivienne, a 10-year-old with a penchant for bouncy princess dresses and the color pink, had a motive. Alarmed by photos she’d seen of Nepalese children hauling enormous rocks down a mountain, she decided in May 2012 to raise money to stop child slavery. When people stopped at her lemonade stand to ask how much she was charging, Vivienne said, “Whatever’s in your heart.” She donated the $101,320 to Not for Sale, a nonprofit that works to eradicate human trafficking around the world. But she wasn’t finished.

During the last year and a half, her campaign morphed into a corporation. Make a Stand Lemon-Aid, which her father oversees, sells fair-trade, organic lemonade at 137 stores and is expected to gross $2 million this year.

Along the way, Vivienne became a bit of a celebrity. In November, she joined “Star Trek” actor Patrick Stewart to ring the opening bell for Twitter’s IPO at the New York Stock Exchange – a distinction bestowed because she and her dad, a social-media professional, had made extensive use of the microblogging service.