BELLEVUE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Isabella and Ireland Kirkpatrick sell their lemonade for just one dollar, but last year they raised $2,600.
“I thought we were just going to make, like, a couple hundred,” said Isabella Kirkpatrick.
“We love it,” said Deputy Jason Vogel.
He tells FOX 11 it’s heart-warming to see kids taking such an active role.
“These girls are taking the initiative on their own to help try and combat this issue that is nationwide.”
It’s their anti-bullying message that brought residents and law enforcement from around the state to buy lemonade from two middle schoolers in Bellevue.
“Our brother was getting bullied and we wanted to make sure no other kids had to go through what our brother did,” said Kirkpatrick.
The funds raised at last year’s lemonade stand paid for national speaker Kirk Smalley from ‘Stand up for the Silent’ to talk to students at Washington Middle School.
Smalley tells the story of how his 11-year-old son died by suicide after being bullied in school for two years.
According to stopbullying.gov, 1 in 3 students in the U.S say they’ve been bullied, nearly 71 percent of young people say they’ve seen bullying in their school, and 41 percent of school faculty witness bullying more than once a week.
In Wisconsin, the suicide rate among high schoolers has gone up 30 percent in the last 8 years, and those statistics are disturbing to the Kirkpatrick family.
“I don’t think any child should feel like the world would be a better place without them,” said the girl’s aunt Lisa Harley. “To me that’s heartbreaking.”
This year they hope to have Smalley speak at multiple schools in the area.
Lisa Harley tells FOX 11 she’s proud of her nieces for what they’ve accomplished.
“They took the time and empathized with other kids and they really wanted to help.”
