MAY 19 is officially Lemonade Day in Manchester, Tennessee, and the day means a lot more than just a celebration of a delicious drink. Vice Mayor Mark Messick made the official proclamation on May 10, 2022, but the day and the initiation of the program that inspired it were spearheaded by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
“We’ve got a fantastic chamber of commerce – they’re very active and they do very good jobs, and they deserve all the credit for this,” Messick said. “I just happen to be lucky enough to be where… I could do the proclamation.”
Executive director of the chamber of commerce, Katy Riddle, heard about Lemonade Day at a chamber of commerce conference. Lemonade Day is a national youth entrepreneurship program based in Texas, that teaches students how to create a business plan, market a product, and make a profit.
“I knew that I had to bring it to Manchester,” Riddle said. “We immediately reached out to the school system to see how we could partner to bring this to Manchester, and it took a little while in order to figure out how we wanted to implement it, but we were so lucky to have the support of both the city of Manchester and the Manchester City Schools, so that every fourth grader at Westwood and College Street Elementary schools will be given the curriculum.”
Riddle said that while there are Lemonade Days all across the United States, Manchester is only the second community to implement the program in Tennessee. Manchester has also implemented the program differently than any other community.
“This curriculum is being taught by the teachers in the classroom,” Riddle said. “In other communities they disseminate the information, typically through someone like a chamber of commerce, and then it becomes a self-guided program – but what we’re doing is giving every student in fourth grade a chance to learn this information.”
Besides the four main learning components of the program, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, self-reliance, and community development, Lemonade Day teaches kids about business creation, branding, and business competition. The learning potential was the greatest benefit of the program for Messick.
“We ought to do more stuff like this,” Messick said. “So children won’t be so illiterate when they graduate, as far as balancing a checkbook and knowing how to make money.”
Riddle said while being able to implement Lemonade Day was expensive for the chamber of commerce, the community responded by surpassing the fundraising goal. The extra funds will be put towards sustaining the program for the future. Besides fundraising, the Manchester community has been involved in providing volunteers, donating signage, and hosting one of the twelve lemonade stands across Manchester.
“I mean, this really has been a true community partnership,” Riddle said. “The community development, workforce initiative, economic development – that’s what a chamber of commerce is all about, so I feel like Lemonade Day encapsulates all of those things.” GN
