Inspiration hit today when I suddenly had to write a lens titled Christmas on a Tight Budget. The ideas kept coming and I finished the project in just a few hours. I’m sure there won’t be a lot of sales from the lens – after all, it is speaking to people with little money – but if anything does get sold it will benefit my favorite charity, Covenant House. This charity helps get homeless teenagers off the streets.

A lot of the teenagers helped by Covenant House were released from foster care with no family and no place to go. I recently made another lens, Drugging Foster Children, which included videos of teenagers telling about how they’d been given multiple psychotropic drugs while in state custody. In one video a teenager stated that when his brother had his eighteenth birthday his foster parent woke him up in the middle of the night, just past midnight, and told him he was eighteen and to get out. This boy didn’t even know his real family. He was sent to the streets. Covenant House helps children in this predicament every day.

Many families are low on funds now, with the recession taking jobs and homes. We need to remember that there are many ways to celebrate Christmas, and that money is not the reason for the season.