Mango Money: How a 12-year-old is spending his summer serving his community

A 12-year-old boy with a love for a tropical fruit and an entrepreneurial spirit is getting to work on a big idea--one that could be of major use to his Plantation community.

It starts with a passion.

“I love mangoes, mango smoothies, mango candy, normal mangoes,” Nicholas Spence told only NBC6 enthusiastically.

But, he said, too many were going to waste.

“I saw that a lot of my neighbors have trees, and they're not able to always pick the mangoes, and I see them all on the ground a lot,” Nicholas said. “I thought, 'Oh, a lot of people like me love mangoes. So, like, what if I pick the mangoes and redistribute them?'”

His mother posted on a Facebook group about his want to serve this summer.

“Not even like 30 minutes after, there was like 10, 15 people [interested],” Nicholas said.

“I go out and I ask people if I can harvest the mangoes and we can, if they don’t want the mangoes, I can give them some money for it, or we can split the mangoes, like, you get 20, I get 20,” he explained.

And not even 24 hours later, he had his first customer, Plantation resident Jessica Wallace.

“I thought it was awesome for many reasons. It’s not often these days that you see kids wanting to do work and work hard for things,” Wallace said.

She split the earnings of 40 mangoes collected from her home with Nicholas. He then gave the fruits to a local group called Green Tomato, which delivers local produce to those in South Florida.

"There’s ton of mango trees, and in the back there are so many that go unused and wasted, and I just thought it was such an awesome idea that he had a local buyer that was going to buy this and use this in their service program,” Wallace said.

Nicholas' business now goes by the name SoFla Boy Mangoes. And his buyer, Green Tomato, wants his mangoes for the whole season.

To meet the demand, he'll likely spend his days in the hot sun, using his mango picker and ladder to get each and every one.

“Just knowing that he’s out there helping the community and staying busy and focusing on bettering himself is making his mother and I proud," his father said.

Nicholas hopes to pocket enough mango money to send himself to basketball camp, and learn a thing or two about being a boss, since he'll probably run his own business in the future, too, he said.

Looking through his bucket of mangoes, Nicholas explained how he determined which were good to eat.

“I don’t like how... it's dented and mushy," he said, pointing to a fruit with brown spots. “But this one," Nicholas said as he collected an orange and green mango, "is nice.”

When asked if he'd keep it for himself, he responds: "No, I'll probably give it to you."