From lemonade, donations
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on August 10, 2017 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Ella Hodach, 7, second from right, asks a customer if he wants regular lemonade or sour pink lemonade at her fundraising lemonade stand for the Wayne County Animal Shelter in front of Pet Supplies Plus. In addition to lemonade, Ella sold cookies and brownies.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
All proceeds from Ella's lemonade stand are going to the Wayne County Animal Shelter. She repeatedly told people her goal was $1,000.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Ella Hodach, 7, pours a cup of lemonade for a customer. She set up the stand for three hours to raise as much money as possible for the local animal shelter.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Mandy Hodach and her daughter, Ella, 7, take orders at Ella's lemonade stand.
Ella Hodach loves pets and wanted to do something to help the ones at the local animal shelter. But there's only so much a 7-year-old can do.
That didn't stop Ella.
She opened a lemonade stand Wednesday at Pet Supplies Plus for three hours, selling regular and pink lemonade and sweet treats, taking donations for the animal shelter and encouraging people to foster pets.
"I like it because you help take care of pets," Ella said. "I like to help raise money for the animal shelter."
This is the second year that Ella has opened a lemonade stand for charity. Last year, proceeds were divided between the animal shelter and Habitat for Humanity.
Her mother, Mandy, and father, Christian, matched what Ella raised last year -- $75. They will match the $259.69 that Ella's lemonade stand raised this year.
The yearly fundraiser came about when one day, Ella told her mother and father she wanted to do the lemonade stand.
"She just came up to us and told us she wanted to do that," Mrs. Hodach said.
"Starting about in kindergarten, Ella had wanted to have a lemonade stand. She probably saw it somewhere. We kind of put it off a little bit that first year. It takes a lot to put up a lemonade stand. Last summer, almost exactly a year ago, we did the first one."
Ella is passionate about animals.
"It's a cause that's close to her heart and mostly because we have been fostering cats," Mrs. Hodach said. "We've lived in a lot of places throughout the country and I'm always involved with animals. We do whatever part we can to help."
It's even closer to Ella's heart since she lost one of her own cats a couple months ago. She loves all animals, especially cats.
The Hodach family fosters cats from the animal shelter, especially when one needs socialization.
"If there's a cat needing socialization or is exhibiting any type of behavior that it's depressed, sad or lonely or just needs extra care, we'll take it to the house," Mrs. Hodach said.
The family does what it can to get others to rally around Wayne County's pet population.
"There was an article recently in the New York Times about how much of an impact being a foster to animals is in the shelter system," Mrs. Hodach said. "In the shelter, at any given time, there's an influx of pets, especially in the summer time. And they can't hold them all at the shelter, there's not enough room.
"For those of us who can hold onto them and give them love, it gives them that extra oomph that somebody will notice them when they walk by them at the shelter."
Ella hopes, through her lemonade stand, to get more people to help local animals, even if they can't foster them.
"If people in the community want to volunteer at the animal shelter, they can go walk dogs, help with feeding the animals and cleaning up after them or just socialization, giving them that extra attention that they're not getting while they're sitting there -- love, love, love while they're waiting," Mrs. Hodach said. "Same with cats.
"You can go in as a volunteer and get a cat out of the kennel and take it to the visiting room and just play with it, love on it, pet it. That makes a huge difference in the lives of pets."
Mrs. Hodach said she feels like a lot of people think they can't volunteer with animals at the shelter because it's too sad. She would encourage them to look at the positive side of it -- and there is one -- instead of looking at just the sad part.
"We'd love to continue the lemonade stand," she said. "We have two other children, and if Ella sort of moves away from it, we'll involve the other two."