Four little girls recently hosted a lemonade stand at Peach Park in Clanton to raise money for childhood cancer.

Ellie Grace Reece, 5, along with her three best friends, Anna Lynn White, 4, Millie Cleckler, 4 and Mary Henning Dale, 5, spent the day Aug. 30 serving up lemonade to passersby at Peach Park in hopes of raising money and awareness of childhood cancer.

September is National Childhood Cancer Month, and the girls decided to kick off the month by serving up lemonade to patrons visiting Peach Park.

“The girls had so much fun,” Kellie Reece said. “We didn’t charge for the lemonade, but the girls would yell out to everyone ‘lemonade’ as people were walking by. It was just really neat to see the response from different people in this community.”

The girls raised more than $500 for Children’s Hospital of Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders and Camp Smile-A-Mile’s Hospital Outreach Program.

Kellie Reece, who is Ellie Grace’s mom, works as Family Outreach Director at Camp Smile- A-Mile and hopes to spread the word in the community about childhood cancer.

“People in Chilton County have been touched by childhood cancer because it is something that affects many different people,” Reece said. “Only 4 percent of national cancer funding goes to pediatric cancer. We wanted to create something fun for people to relate to such as a lemonade stand, and hopefully encourage others to donate and bring awareness to a cause that is tremendously underfunded.”

Reece and Catherine White, who is an oncology nurse at Children’s Hospital, came up with the idea for “Lemon8” stands to “eLemon8” cancer.

Reece said the number eight has special meaning because the oncology unit at Children’s Hospital is on the eighth floor.

“Catherine and myself work with children on a daily basis who have been affected by cancer,” Reece said. “Many of these children are the same age as our girls. Cancer takes a toll on these kids and part of our gratitude for our healthy children is teaching our girls to give back.”

Reece said 150 children in Alabama are diagnosed with cancer every year and more than 90 percent of the children will be treated at Children’s of Alabama.

Reece said White created a “Lemon8” Facebook page to help spread the word and encourage others to host a lemonade stand.

Anyone willing to host a lemonade stand for “Lemon8” is invited to post pictures and results from the lemonade stand on the Facebook page.

“We had a lot of people asking us why the color gold, and we let them know that gold is the color for Childhood Cancer Month,” Reece said. “I hope we were able to get the ball rolling and bring awareness to something that is one of the leading causes of children’s deaths in the country. We want people to know that this is real, and it is happening every day.”

For more information about “Lemon8,” contact Reece at Kellie.Reece@campsam.org or visit the “Lemon8” Facebook page.