SAN ANTONIO – During this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lemonade stands have been put on hold. But that wasn’t the case for one family who started a virtual lemonade stand to use it as both a teaching and a giving tool.
Arica Espinoza, mother of three and five-year-old Andi and Aldus Espinoza, has added teacher to her resume, much like the hundreds of thousands of parents across the country.
Espinoza lost her job during the pandemic, but called it a blessing in disguise because she has been able to use her time with her two young children to teach them how to help out the community.
While teaching the alphabet and getting to the letter L, she wanted to get creative while also teaching her children how to give back.
“So I thought lemonade stand,” Arica Espinoza said. “However with the times right now it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Then I thought, well, why don’t we do it virtually?”
The money they raised was to go to the San Antonio Food Bank.
“There are kids that are going hungry right now,” Aldus Espinoza said.
The family was blown away from the response to their Facebook post, where they shared their virtual lemonade fundraiser.
“We thought maybe $200,” Arica said.
That number, however, shot well over $2,000. Mom said they formed an assembly line and the children helped out as well.
“My job was to put all the packages in there,” Andi said.
Aldus said his favorite part of the work was delivering the goodie bags.
“When we deliver them on their door steps, they come out and they say they are just super happy,” Aldus said.
The Espinoza’s took it a step forward and donated the leftover goodie bags to local front-line medical workers.
“With the outpouring of donations, most people said no, we just want to donate, keep the lemonade so I just wanted to do something to honor those people,” Arica said.
Arica’s husband, Adrian Espinoza, says he is proud of his family, calling his wife a rockstar for taking teaching and giving to another level.
“Keeping our kids engaged, as you can see they are not the most engaged, they get bored easily so her doing all this stuff was amazing,” Adrian said.
Adrian says he spoke with his company Horizon Theraputics and the company agreed to match his family’s donations, so in total, they have raised $4,000 for the San Antonio Food Bank.