What started as a quest to earn his own money has morphed into a humanitarian crusade by 9-year-old Dylan Rodrigues of Ocean Beach to help others in need, especially children.
\nOn Wednesdays, between 4 and 6 p.m., soft-spoken Dylan can often be found at his lemonade stand on Bacon Street, giving away free cups of the cold drink. In return, his thankful, thirst-quenched patrons have compensated him with donations, part of which he regularly contributes toward helping needy others.
\nOne recent recipient of Dylan\u2019s lemonade largesse has been his lifelong friend Kalel Hamilton. Kalel, now living with his family in Northern California, has been stricken by muscular dystrophy. Some of Dylan\u2019s lemonade proceeds have lately been going to help pay for Kalel\u2019s stem-cell treatments.
\nDylan\u2019s mom, Holly Raines, talked about the origin of her young son\u2019s enterprise.
\n“In 2016 when he was 6 years old, Dylan came up with the idea of getting a $100 bill,” she said. “His dad Marco and I told him he had to earn it, either by doing chores or starting a lemonade stand. He asked his dad to help him build a lemonade stand, and he started selling in summer 2016.”
\nNoting Dylan\u2019s lemonade is absolutely free, she said it soon became obvious that his customers were being generous with their donations. That led she and Marco to encourage Dylan to use his proceeds to return the favor.
\n“We suggested that, since people had been kind to him, that he ought to think about paying it forward, giving back to the community,” Holly said. “So he started investing, and by winter he had enough money to do something to help people living on the streets.”
\nDylan donated backpacks and sack lunches to the homeless. Other projects of his have since included art supplies (Dylan does abstract acrylic art learned from YouTube) for children at Rady\u2019s Hospital, and gifts for Syrian refugees.
\nWhy does he do it?
\n“It just feel good when you help out,” Dylan said. “I feel bad when people are having trouble.”
\nHolly is “extremely” proud of her son and his growing altruism.
\n“He always ends up donating significantly more money to his projects from his piggy bank,” she said. “It\u2019s not something he has to do. It\u2019s something he wants to do.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What started as a quest to earn his own money has morphed into a humanitarian crusade by 9-year-old Dylan Rodrigues of Ocean Beach to help others in need, especially children. On Wednesdays, between 4 and 6 p.m., soft-spoken Dylan can often be found at his lemonade stand on Bacon Street, giving away free cups of […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":267046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"When life gives you lemonade, pour it forward","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}