We had the opportunity to shoot an event for Fostering Hope early last week. As I sat in my driveway, I pulled up the flyer for the event to get the address. Although I knew about the event for some time, I really didn’t know what the event was. I just know that I’m aligning myself with what Fostering Hope is doing and I’ve committed myself and our business to helping them whenever I can.
This was heavy.
The event was located at the equivalent of an orphanage with attached recovery and family crisis center. This was a place for society’s forgotten; homeless, helpless, hopeless. FH gathers gifts and volunteers carefully wrap them as they would for their own children. Santa Claus shows up and leads Christmas carols as volunteers stand in as a temporary family to these lost kids. The volunteers spend one-on-one time with each child, awarding them the gifts that FH procured, giving them the love and attention they so desperately need.
It was a somber drive to Cleveland. At one point, I thought about my own kids as if they were in that situation. I cried…ugly cried. After some thought, the sad cry turned to tears of joy as I was able to put it in perspective. These kids look forward to Christmas more than anything else all year. They don’t know the delight of waking up on Christmas morning, jumping on their parents bed and begging to begin whatever ritual or rite leads to the opening of presents, the Super Bowl of childhood. In my family, we have a slumber party at grandma and grandpa’s house, wake up to a huge breakfast, dig in to stockings and then shift to the glorious present exchange. To me, it’s incredibly depressing that these children will not likely ever experience that. To these children, this event provides that same level of joy. It just looks different.
To protect the identity of the children, we weren’t able to film or photograph them. In fact, I was only able to meet one of them and it wasn’t what I expected at all. I imagined a little girl in cute pj’s, toting a blankie and raggedy old teddy bear. What I encountered was an exceptionally awkward teen, dressed similarly to a homeless person. She was awkward in the sense that she didn’t seem to have the ability to process the volunteers unconditional love for her and her peers. She carried idiosyncrasies of a shell-shocked soldier, looking right through the volunteers. Again, I was absolutely heart broken as I departed with confused emotions. We came to do so much good but I felt miserable about it.
There is no happy ending for me. After several days of reflection I came to the conclusion that all I can do is continue to fight for these children with what I have, a camera and the ability to share compelling stories. I can’t be everything to everyone but I can give Fostering Hope my best and allow them to use my tools and talents to keep doing exactly what they’re doing.
Christmas truly is the season of giving. Even if the gift is a sobering reminder of how good my childhood was and my adult life continues to be. This is why we’re using this season to launch our social responsibility initiative, One for One. This has been progressing since the inception of Soapboxr Creative, but now we’re opening it up beyond friends and family. For every minute of commercial footage or photography, we’re giving one to a non-profit or humanitarian cause.