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Lemonade Stand Sales Pour Into Aurora Food Pantry

Savannah Crooks.
Yvonne Boose
Savannah Crooks.

Savannah Crooks started her philanthropic journey at the age of 7.

Lemonade stands can be a good way for a child to start their journey to become an entrepreneur. But one Aurora teenager started her stand with one purpose -- to help others.

This is the 10th year that Savannah Crooks has sold lemonade made by her mother. Her philanthropic tendencies started when she was 7 years old. The idea stemmed from her desire to help another little girl.

“So, one of my friends [who] my mom worked with had a cancer association to, like, help raise money,” Crooks explained. “And there was this little girl named Piper, and I remember seeing a bunch of stuff about it. And I came downstairs with, like, a bag of pennies and quarters and nickels and stuff. And I was like, I want to give this as a donation to Piper.”

Crooks said her mom suggested she do something bigger, and that’s how the lemonade stand got started. The first year she raised $100, which she donated to the pediatric cancer organization.

That place closed, but Crooks wanted to continue to raise money to help others.

“So, my mom brought up the idea of the food pantry because like it's local,” she said. “And everyone seems to have some sort of tie to Marie Wilkinson or, like, know people who have gone hungry and stuff.”

Since then Savannah has poured the money she raises every summer into the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry. Last year, she raised $2,500 for the organization.

Diane Renner is the executive director of the pantry. She said the community support for the stand has grown over the years.

“The fire department comes, the police department, all of the neighbors, all the family and friends,” she said. “[For] a of years, we took our van and had it sitting there for a while too.”

Crooks wants to encourage other teenagers to figure out a way to become charitable. She suggests that one way they can do this is by volunteering.

“There's plenty of places that do that stuff,” she said. “Like, I tried to get a couple of friends together every once in a while to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children. Because like, that's just a little fun activity for us to do.”

And Renner said when Crooks and her mom dropped off the donations, she expressed to them her desire that the stand might spark something bigger.

“And hopefully, other children are seeing what you're doing and they're going to try to start some type of, in my opinion, kind of a social enterprise,” Renner said.

Crooks is now 17 years old. She acknowledged that she is not the typical age for someone with a lemonade stand and she’s not sure how long she will maintain this summer sale.

“I've been thinking about maybe passing down to someone else. It’s just a matter of, like, who,” she said. “And just maybe even doing it with that person. And I'm trying to figure out, like, how to do it and, like, getting the word out. But still, I'm definitely going to have some tie to it.”

She’s leaving for college this fall and wants to study teaching, which she said is another form of outreach for her.

In any case, Crooks said she will continue to help people as she gets older.

“And there's people that could have everything, and then people that could have nothing, and I feel like we should be helping those people who have nothing,” she said. “Because everyone deserves like, everyone deserves water. Everyone deserves food. Everyone deserves to be able to like, have the stuff they need to keep living.”

Crooks raised $2,845 last week. In addition to the lemonade stand, she received funds from a garage sale and other online donations.

  • Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
Yvonne covers artistic, cultural, and spiritual expressions in the COVID-19 era. This could include how members of community cultural groups are finding creative and innovative ways to enrich their personal lives through these expressions individually and within the context of their larger communities. Boose is a recent graduate of the Illinois Media School and returns to journalism after a career in the corporate world.