ALL Printables Are Now Free!

Sometimes the best thing you can do to help the world is to do something little, something to help people take a little more control of their lives, so they can work toward achieving their dreams and in turn help somebody else achieve theirs. During the last few months, I've been wondering how I can make more of a difference in the world, and I came up with a small idea.

Kristen's Guide is well known for all the free printables, but I've also offered higher quality printable and hard copy organizers, calendars, workbooks, planners, forms, and customized documents for sale. To ensure that people on a budget could afford such items, I've always set low prices, and even with those low prices I still made a respectable amount of money from those sales. Then I started thinking about people who couldn't even afford to buy those low priced items: kids, people without bank accounts, people who were counting their pennies.

I grew up poor, so I know what it's like to be limited to only free items offered by libraries, schools, government programs, and non-profit organizations while my more financially secure friends got to go shopping for high quality products whenever they wanted. But that was before electronic media. Of course we needed to pay for paper, printing, the overhead for the store that sold it, transportation, materials to produce tapes or CDs, storage space, etc. Those kinds of resources are limited. But in today's electronic age, it just doesn't seem right to keep an electronic document, a bunch of binary code that can be reproduced and distributed infinitely and easily, from financially challenged people.

So I'm no longer going to sell electronic printables. I'm giving them all away for free.

Go to
http://www.kristensguide.com/Printables/index.asp to find out more.

Skip Your Morning Latte... Save a Life

Kristen's Guide is making an effort to stop cancer, and I need your help.

My father died of pancreatic cancer. My maternal grandmother died of brain cancer. My maternal grandfather died of throat cancer. My paternal grandmother had skin cancer and breast cancer. My husband had mouth cancer. The son of a good friend of mine had leukemia. One of my favorite English teachers died from brain cancer. My neighbor has brain cancer.

I'm tired of cancer stealing away my loved ones and raining misery on our lives.

Please help me fight cancer by donating your spare change to the American Cancer Society. Don't have any spare change? Then skip your morning latte (or afternoon soda, etc.) and spend the money on fighting cancer.

Every $1 makes a difference. Don't believe me? I've set up a group page, called Families Fighting Cancer, at the American Cancer Society events sites. I plan to gather up loose change, skip an indulgence once per week, and donate a tiny bit of money here and there to the ACS. Plus, I'm going to ask other people to do the same. The goal is to see if a few tiny sacrifices can really make a difference by eventually reaching a donation goal of $1,000.

$1,000 in spare change.

Want to help?

Go to
http://main.acsevents.org/goto/familiesfightingcancer
and donate $1 or $5 or more if you can.

Stop Legalized Murder in the USA

Last night I saw a documentary that drove me to action. The Innocent is about ordinary people, just like you and me, who were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death row. The problem is that they didn't commit the crime. They were completely innocent. They spent years in a tiny cell, missed watching their children grow up, and had their dreams destroyed all because of a flawed legal system. Some are fortunately exonerated before their execution date, but there are many who are only found innocent after they've been killed.

For me, having a happy life requires that I attempt to help other people have happy lives as well, so I had to do something about it. Today I wrote my government officials, researched non-profit organizations focused on helping victims of wrongful conviction (and added them to my charities-to-support list), and updated my capital punishment essay. Tomorrow, I'll do more.

Check out my article about the death penalty
http://www.kristensguide.com/Activism/Human_Rights/death_penalty.asp

Survive the Drought

The South is suffering through a HUGE drought, the worst in over 100 years. And the West isn't doing so great either.

Here are some water saving tips to help everyone, especially everyone in the South, live without wasting water.

See them at
http://www.kristensguide.com/Activism/Environment/conserving_water.asp

Should We Put Religion in Public Schools?

What about in court houses and laws? Should we allow our leaders to govern based on their own religious beliefs?

See more at:
http://kristensguide.com/Activism/Human_Rights/church_and_state.asp