'Heart-warming' donations for mental health from Sapphire Coast youth

Axl's latest donation was to Headspace Bega, to which he managed to donate over $2500, in the hopes of helping support other youth in the area.

"I do it for two reasons, one for the fun of it and two to help people," Axl said.

Axl said he was always "on a hunt for a cause to donate towards" and found, to his surprise, that there were many things to donate to in the Bega Valley Shire.

"With the fires and COVID, I thought it would be a good thing to donate towards mental health," he said.

The majority of Axl's proceeds had been earnt during the Wanderer Festival in September 2021, where he had set up his lemonade stand for the three-day event.

Axl first started up the idea to run a lemonade stand and donate half of his proceedings five years ago, after dreaming about it one night.

"It really started with a dream, like a literal dream about making lemonade," he said.

Axl had awoken the next day and asked his mum if he could make some lemonade. He said he managed to replicate the recipe exactly as it had been in his dream - which turned into an instant success.

Since then he's added a few secret ingredients to make his lemonades that extra bit special and previously sold them at local food festivals and events.

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Axl said he was pleased to see the money he had raised go straight back into the community.

Community engagement officer at Headspace Bega Carly McDonald said the funds raised would "go directly into the community" through supporting programs, clinical support, projects, and events that work towards improving the social and emotional wellbeing of young people in the region.

Ms McDonald said they had also received a generous donation by another young man in the area, Jack Webster.

Jack recently raffled a custom-made timber surfboard from his business 'sixfish' and donated over $1000 of the proceeds.

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Ms McDonald said it was "really heart-warming" to see young men take initiative without being asked to.

"They decided to donate to Headspace because they knew it goes straight to young people and I think it's beautiful that these young men understand the value of mental health services," she said.

Ms McDonald said she was grateful to the team at Wanderer Festival who had supported the two young men in setting up their stands to sell lemonades and raffles at the festival.

"It was really nice to see a big festival supporting a local youth organisation, so a big shout out to Wanderer," she said.