10-year-old entrepreneur in Yukon raises $210 for local food bank

Angus MacLean, 10, has learned a few things from his first foray into fundraising.

For one thing, "it takes a lot of work to do something," he said.

But MacLean's recent hard work setting up and running a hot chocolate stand in his hometown of Watson Lake, Yukon, was definitely worth it — he managed to raise $210 for the local food bank. 

"I wanted, like, something to benefit our community," he explained.

MacLean came up with the idea for a hot chocolate stand, and then decided to set up at a local hockey event. He made a big sign saying all the money would go to local charities, and thereby learned another valuable lesson.

"If you're not donating stuff, probably people like, won't buy as much," he said.

He had all the fixings on hand for customers.

"We had some whipped cream, we had two kinds of marshmallows — we had regular and fruit kind — we also had like, sprinkles," he said.

MacLean was also offering different flavours of hot chocolate: Aero, Turtles, caramel. But those options ended up serving another lesson to the budding entrepreneur.

"Not a lot of people wanted those. They just wanted to stick to the original," he said.

"That was his learning experience: he had too much different types of hot chocolate," said Angus's mom, Jean MacLean.

Jean says it was a great experience all around.

"We're really proud of him. For wanting to do that, and wanting to donate to the community. Yeah, it was a really great learning experience for him."

Angus didn't quite reach his fundraising goal of $300, so instead of spreading the money among a few local charities he gave it all to the food bank.

And he's already starting to think about his next fundraising venture.

"We might do it next year or maybe this year," he said. "Next time I'm going to fundraise for my school's field trip."