Everyone loves lemonade and cookies, and everyone loves saving animals. Why not combine them?

So thought 5-year-old Eva Roukema. Outside Aldena Frye Custom Floral & Silk Design on Main Street in Aberdeen late last week, she sold cookies and lemonade, donating all the proceeds to Animal Advocates of Moore County.

“Eva’s my granddaughter,” says Aldena Frye, who helped out with the sale. “I’m extremely proud of her.”

During the school year, Eva lives with her parents in Paris, where her father, Ron Roukema, is the headmaster at Marymount International School; the three spend Christmas and summer with their relatives in Aberdeen. Eva got the idea for the lemonade stand from her Parisian friends’ charity project.

“Marymount has a mission to feed, educate and help out a community of orphans in Zimbabwe,” says Eva’s mother, Ashley Roukema. “She had two friends, first-graders, who had a lemonade stand to support the Zimbabwe mission.”

Eva decided to add cookies to the menu.

“Lemonade makes you hungry,” she says. “I thought people would like some cookies, too.”

Eva took an active role in the preparations. She juiced lemons, made flower arrangements, picked out a tablecloth, and distributed flyers all over Aberdeen.

“[Eva and I] finished juicing the lemons at about 8:30 [the night before],” says Ashley Roukema. “She wanted to help with the cookies, too, but it was past her bedtime.”

The proceeds went to Animal Advocates of Moore County, which seeks to make Moore County a no-kill county.

“I love animals,” says Eva. “I don’t like it when they put the animals to sleep because it hurts my heart.”

Eva and her family also collected donations, the largest donor being Aberdeen Exterminating.

All told, they raised $301.09.

“Don’t ask me where the nine cents came from,” says Frye.

The Roukemas are proud of their daughter for displaying social awareness at such a young age. They believe that raising her between two countries has helped her have a broader, more humanitarian perspective.

“Growing up, I did a lot of things similar to this, but I was a lot older,” says Ron Roukema. “We want her to be globally minded and aware of the diversities around her. That’s why she wants to help and advocate for animals: She sees the cruelty to animals in some cultures.”

“I feel like I’m both American and French,” says Eva. “I think it’ll be even better if we did something to help animals in Paris. I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up because I love [animals] so much, and I want to do something that can help them.”

Contact Andrew Soboeiro at andrew@ thepilot.com.