How Beaufort County lemonade is helping African children get clean water to drink

Sweat, cutely pooled around the nose of 9-year-old Anne-Murphy Miller, threatens to start trickling down her face.

The cups of lemonade she’s selling are also sweating, no surprise on a June Saturday in Waterfront Park. But all that sweating is worth it.

Anne-Murphy and her brother, 8-year-old Nate, are the unlikely proprietors of “Murphy’s Pucker Up,” a lemonade stand dedicated to donating profits to an African country in need of safe drinking water.

This isn’t your mother’s lemonade stand.

In fact, it’s more of a “lemon-aid stand.” It came to be after Anne-Murphy and Nate attended a presentation at their school, Holy Trinity Classical Christian School. A sister school of theirs, the Good Shepherd Academy in Juba, South Sudan, has precious little safe drinking water for more than 500 students and staff. Though the school has recently installed a well, all those life-sustaining gallons need to go through a filtration system. That’s where the Miller children decided they could jump in.

“Nate and I talked, and we wanted to build something that helps people and saves lives,” said Anne-Murphy. “We don’t ever have to think about our water here.”

They went home and discussed the situation with their mom, Plum Productions owner Jodie Bush Miller. Mom not only encouraged the venture, she began using her considerable business acumen. After contacting both the academy and Vestergaard, the humanitarian company in Switzerland that provides the Lifestraw filtration system, Miller began to make some local calls for help making the stand a reality. Though she said she "never used a power tool in my life,” Jodie managed to repurpose a wooden cart donated by Pluff Mud Coffee in Port Royal.

PickleJuice Productions designed the company logo that eventually was emblazoned on the cart by Signs Now. Many Beaufort hands, unsurprisingly, made light the work for the Millers.

Except when it came to the making of the lemonade, which takes about an hour for every 10 gallons.

For the debut at the park, family and friends made up roughly 50 gallons. They chose to slip in a little watermelon syrup as an added bonus. The next time, it may be blood oranges or limes. Again, it’s not the standard lemonade stand you'll find on every corner.

“We chose to make lemonade because it’s healthier than soda and it’s something we could make ourselves,” Anne-Murphy explained.

While Anne-Murphy, with a little help, handles most of the out-front marketing for the stand, she describes Nate as “working in a whole different station.” It's part of the reason they get along so well.

“I’m the person who controls the money,” said Nate. That includes handling the day’s take and ensuring the cash and credit card transactions (yes, there’s a Square) flow as sweetly as sugar.

“There’s not a lot I trust him on, but on this I trust him completely” said Anne-Murphy.

Unlike some other family businesses, these two have less arguments and more “friendly conversations” over who makes more lemonade (as if there is a loser in that equation).

The winners, of course, are not only the “donors” here who drink the product, but those who benefit from 100 percent of its proceeds — the children of South Sudan. Proceeds from the lemonade stand go toward a $2,500 filtration system for the Juba Academy.

Nearly a quarter of that amount has been raised thus far. You can follow the project's progress at murphyspuckerup.com.

One system provides clean water for 3-5 years for more than 500 people, so once the Millers have raised their first $2,500 they will move on to the next filtration system for the next school in either South Africa or the Bahamas.

The stand itself moves on to the July Fourth parade in Habersham, then to other events throughout the fall.

It's a heck of a “how I spent my summer vacation” story the Miller family is writing.

And the goal is something we can all raise our glasses to.

This story was originally published June 27, 2018 at 9:44 AM.