Letters to a Young Inmate
overview // sponsor an initiative starter kit // curriculum add-ins // contact us
The Letters to a Young Inmate initiative is a series of twenty-six letters written by older people experiencing incarceration to youth in juvenile detention—offering wisdom, advice, empathy, and hope. The letters take form in a unique binding-free booklet that is designed to invite different uses: 1) To be read as a series of letters to an individual youth; 2) A self-guided writing workshop (prompts are included with each letter); 3) An included invitation to write a Thank You note to the authors of the letters; 4) Juvenile detention / program staff can use the booklet to facilitate workshops, and access further curriculum ideas online.
Great news! We rolled out the initiative in October 2023, in tandem with National Youth Justice Action Month.
Shout outs and gratitude to our grantors and individual patrons for helping the vision take form.
Thanks to ArtsWA, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts for believing in—and supporting—the work we're doing!
Thanks to our collaboration partners / letter writers: Brothers in Pen (California) and Truth Be Told (Texas), as well as individual letter writers in Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
Thanks and shout outs: Nathan McGehee (Roosevelvet Design) for designing the booklet, Jennifer Bradbury and Laurie Parker for help developing the prompt-based curriculum, ADI Printing for helping the booklet take form, and Lindy Boustedt (First Sight Productions) for the initiative’s promo trailer.
To celebrate the launch, we sent our e-news subscribers a sample letter each Monday in October (the same sample letters are also posted on this page). If you’d like to join our e-news list, please sign up here.
2024 | Update
We’ve shipped initiative starter kits (boxed sets of 100 booklets + an instruction guide) to all the juvenile detention facilities in Washington, and are now shipping to other parts of the country.
You can sponsor an initiative starter kit by donating $100.
Greetings, Friends—volunteers, program coordinators, teachers, and juvenile detention staff. We designed the Letters to a Young Inmate initiative and booklet to be inviting, beautiful, and easy to use. If the youth in your juvenile detention facility or classroom have the booklet, they have everything they need to engage with the initiative. Additionally, we want to provide some extra curriculum ideas that can be used to further facilitate discussions and workshops. These are free for you to download, photocopy, and use. Click on the curriculum images here to access the printable .PDF file. We’d love to hear from you, too—other ideas you’ve used, as well as any feedback you’d like to offer.
NOTE: Please reach out to us using the form below for more information. We’d love for you to join us in the Letters to a Young Inmate initiative (i.e., getting the initiative into your local juvenile detention facility, receiving copies of the booklet and prompt-based curriculum, as well as participating in the initiative’s workshop community).