By Henry and Catherine Bourgin
Twelve-year old Henry is affected by XLHED, as is his mom, Catherine. They live in McLean, VA.
Henry would like to share his thoughts on having a lemonade stand with baked goods during summer break:
“When I’m at the lemonade stand, we like to talk to each other and when other people come we’ll have conversations. The way we have signs set up is we paint boxes and put stones or some bricks in them (to weigh them down from the breezes by the cars passing by).
Sometimes we just get waves of people coming. Some just stop by to donate or to have a conversation. The best part about the lemonade stand is we get to meet a lot of new people and we have fun doing it.
The days we have our lemonade stand were nice, not too hot or cold. We bake lemon bars, brownies, sugar cookies. We stay outside for 4 hours.
When we are all done, we drink and eat what’s left or save it for another day. We also invite our neighbors to the lemonade stand. The best part about the lemonade stand is we get to help people like giving them something to drink and donating money for kids who need a new smile.”
Thoughts from Henry’s mom, Catherine:
The lemonade stand is a classic and we started with that fundraising effort as an introduction for my kids. We try to keep it simple and delicious. We bake just three types of treats: brownies, lemon bars and sugar cookies.
It’s imperative to keep the lemonade cold so we bring a cooler, which sits in the red wagon, with ice blocks and keep the pitchers in the cooler the entire time. We bring folding chairs and a small card table with table cloth. The signs are made out of boxes to get the two sided advertising for two way traffic. Sometimes we use balloons. We live on a quiet street that is a loop so there’s only neighborhood traffic.
We decided to set up our lemonade stand on the main road in order to have visibility for customers and we sit under two shade trees to keep cool. A day or two in advance I write up and distribute a flyer to all the houses on our street (about 50) as another effort to bring awareness and drum up business.
And I post on FB for local friends about our lemonade stand. Both drinks and treats are 50 cents each. Then we sit and wait and hope and wonder how this year’s efforts will turn out. As Henry mentioned, we have a great time meeting not only our very supportive neighbors but all kinds of folks who stop by from all over.
We’ve had a FedEx delivery guy stop saying he didn’t want anything but only had 40 cents to donate and zoomed off. We had a son who called his dad who was out bicycling to tell his dad to head in our direction. The dad then called his wife who was bicycling from another direction to tell her to meet him at our stand.
As parents, they always supported their kids’ lemonade stand and now as their kids are grown they like to support other kids’ lemonade stand efforts. We had some very nice cleaning ladies stop by for drinks and treats and then upon learning about Henry’s HED formed a prayer circle with us to pray.
We met a dentist’s wife who stopped by and shared that her husband was treating someone with HED. We’ve had a truck load of lawn care workers stop and order eight cups of lemonade as they made their way to the next assignment. With a large order like that, we threw in some cookies to show appreciation.
Quite often, after folks learn about the NFED and HED, a conversation starts and we often end up talking about all kinds of things. Others are happy to make a brief stop for a sweet treat and to help with a donation. With each cup of lemonade, we try to provide friendly service with delicious value and thank them for taking time out of their busy day to stop and see us.
As we serve them, we tell them we are supporting the NFED and other kids who need a smile, just like Henry. When we are done, we pack up our little red wagon and head back to our circle, all abuzz about the folks we saw and spoke with. We are always amazed by their generosity and willingness to help in some way as well as their interest and concern about ectodermal dysplasias and well-wishes for Henry and others. Sometimes we think of doing something else as fundraiser but so far we keep returning to the fun of the lemonade stand.
We sincerely hope our efforts do help the NFED get needed funds to those who are desperate to get some dental work done who otherwise would not be able to. We realize our efforts are just a drop in the bucket towards the overall total cost but we do hope it helps. It makes such a big difference in a person’s life not only to have a glistening, white smile but to be able to speak clearly with confidence.
Editor’s Note: Are you interested in hosting a fundraiser to benefit the NFED? Contact Seth Ferris, NFED Family Fundraising Coordinator, at sferris@nfed.org or call the office at NFED 618-566-2020 to start planning your fundraiser. You can also learn more on our website .
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