MOLINE, Ill. — A group of five Bettendorf girls have taken a summertime tradition and turned it into a way to give back to the community.
The "Fab Five Lovely Lemonade" stand raises money every year for a cause of the girls' choosing. Over the past three summers, they've raised a combined $3,000 for Minnie's Fridge in Davenport, Ukraine and the Maui wildfires. This year, the group chose to raise money for breast cancer awareness in honor of a family friend who was diagnosed.
"I think it's helped a lot because a lot of people have wanted to make a difference in the world, and when we do that, I think people are, it's like one act of goodness that's helping a lot," Lauren Jacobs, one of the Fab Five Lovely Lemonade crew members, said.
The girls raised $4,000 to go towards UnityPoint Health - Trinity's Breast Screening Fund, which assists uninsured or underinsured patients in receiving necessary screening and diagnostic testing.
But the total donation ended up being three times that amount after Ruhl & Ruhl Realtors and an anonymous donor matched the $4,000 raised by the girls. Altogether, $12,000 was donated to the Breast Screening Fund.
The extra donations were a surprise for the girls at last week's check presentation.
"I feel like we had just done something that was really important," Sohena Singh, another Fab Five Lovely Lemonade crew member told News 8. "Like we did the fires in Lahaina and then Ukraine. And we raised money for things that were really important to the community."