The two co-founders of Wire of Hope have a strong interest in the condition of incarcerated people and a genuine will to help. They have met, worked with and befriended many people in prison over the years. Creating Wire of Hope’s Prison Pen Pal Program and finding penpals for inmates is not their only action. Here are some of their other involvements.
Volunteering
Both women behind Wire of Hope have had prison penpals for years (read our story) and joined different prison rights related groups.
Sigrid is the Board Secretary of the Northeast Florida Chapter of ACLU, and a member of a couple of anti-death penalty organizations. She hosted Real Talks for the non-profit Florida Cares to inform families of incarcerated on prison reform and how to advocate for their loved ones. She previously volunteered for 2 years as a teacher in a penitentiary that combined a jail and a prison to help inmates get their high school diploma. She also held a weekly workshop to teach them basic computer skills.
Élodie has provided inmates with administrative support to research, piece together and organize their legal petitions and filings, including a clemency petition in connection with a wrongful conviction. She also assisted two of the best criminal defense attorneys in Nevada to overturn a sentence after exposing a Brady violation. She is also involved in many different support groups to fight for prison reform and better conditions for those who are incarcerated.
Greeting Cards for Florida Death Row Inmates
(CLOSED)
At the end of 2021, the Florida Department of Corrections passed a rule getting rid of physical mail, which makes it impossible to send blank cards anymore and put a stop to this donation that was going on for 4 years.
Inmates have people they love and care about on the outside, and mail being so important to them, they naturally want to celebrate their loved ones’ life events with greeting cards.
Wire of Hope is collecting greeting cards for them, so when they’ll need some, they can send us a request. Unfortunately, Florida Death Row inmates – like most Death Row inmates – are not able to work and support themselves, and they can’t always afford to buy cards from the canteen.
If you have accumulated greeting cards that you are not going to use, or if you want to buy some to donate, please send the cards to our Floridian address:
Wire of Hope • P.O. Box 7717 • Jacksonville, FL 32238 • USA
Birthday, “thank you”, holidays, congratulations, “thinking of you” cards or everyday sentiments, all kinds are needed! Just make sure that the cards are only paper, no stickers, no metallic parts, and avoid glitter.
Any quantity (even one!) is welcome and there is no time limit for this!
If you know someone on the row who is in need of cards, tell them to write to the very same address to let us know the kind of cards they need. We ask them to limit to 5/10 cards and to send stamps for the shipping.
Wondering why Wire of Hope uses words like “inmates” and “prisoners” on its website?
Words matter, and those two terms certainly do not reflect our values at Wire of Hope.
In fact, our team would much rather use a respectful language to describe people who experience incarceration, such as “incarcerated people” or “incarcerated individuals.” Unfortunately, using our preferred terminology on the site would most likely hurt our rankings on search engines and lead to traffic losses, which would ultimately affect our members’ opportunities to find people to write to. That is why we have made the decision to keep using words like “inmates” and “prisoners” for now, but are hoping we can switch to a more adequate language in the future.