$3000 Lemonade: 9-Year-Old Boy Raises Money To Help Detroit [Video]

A 9-year-old boy has raised $3,000 to help the city of Detroit, drawing in donations from across the globe to support the cause.

Joshua Smith set up his lemonade stand Monday with a goal of raising $1,000 for the Motor City to ease the pain of its slashed services and laid-off workers, NewsTalkCleveland.com reported. Joshua’s parents helped set the prices for his drinks, charging $1 for water, $1.40 for lemonade and punch and popcorn for $1, $1.50 and $2 a bag.

In just five days the lemonade stand brought in more than $3,000–$3,340, to be exact–and Joshua was given an award for outstanding achievement from the Detroit City Council. He has also earned a $2,000 award for college from the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation.

Joshua sold the lemonade from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. each day, USA Today reported. Aside from lemonade he also sold fruit punch–which he noted was organic–and popcorn flavored with sea salt.

His parents said they didn’t want to tell Joshua that his lemonade stand wouldn’t put much of a dent in the city’s $100 million deficit, but instead invested $100 in the stand and helped him get to work. They likely didn’t expect him to turn a $3,000 lemonade profit

“I’m really proud of him. He wasn’t asking how can he make money to buy himself something. My wife and I were talking about this earlier: Neither of us ever thought to do anything like this when we were kids,” Flynn Smith, a high school math teacher and associate pastor at Evangel Ministries, told USA Today.

The lemonade stand was a hit far outside Joshua’s neighborhood, NewsTalkCleveland.com reported. Contributions came from across the United States as far away as South Africa, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. The stand also drew some famous guests, including the University of Michigan men’s basketball team.

Joshua’s parents said the $3,000 lemonade profit will help maintain a park and playground near their home in the city’s Russell Woods neighborhood.