Announcing Cartas de Paz!
As we recently shared, we are relaunching the Casa de Paz pen pal program. As part of that effort, we changed our name to “Cartas de Paz" (Letters of Peace). We think it’s a cooler and more appropriate name, and we hope you agree!
Volunteer resources
We want to remind you of two helpful volunteer resources:
Our Guidelines & Instructions document has links to virtually all of our volunteer resources - including an extensive FAQ document. We recommend that you bookmark it in your web browser so that you can quickly find it.
Volunteer sign-up form: If you or one of your friends would like to sign up to write to an immigrant in detention, you can use the sign-up form to do so.
Commissary support for immigrants in detention
The former pen pal program was mostly on pause for the first 4 months of this year, so the Cartas de Paz coordinator team is sending this letter to all of the immigrants we know in detention. We will also include a $25 money order with each letter so that our detained friends can purchase items from the commissary.
We will start sending the letters and commissary money this week, so hopefully our detained friends will receive the money soon!
Thank you to our new volunteers!
Many thanks to the 13 volunteers who responded to our request to assist the Cartas de Paz coordinator team!
We are training the new volunteers this week, and their assistance with mailing commissary money to immigrants, matching volunteers with people in detention, and numerous other tasks will help to lighten the load for the team.
Speaking of volunteers . . .
In our last message to you, we made a shout out to the folks who have been on the Cartas de Paz coordinator team the last couple years. We somehow forgot to include Nancy Johnson, who each week provided updated information regarding court hearings for immigrants we know in detention.
This was a labor of love for Nancy, and we are happy to say that she will be continuing this practice in the near future.
Cartas de Paz volunteer town hall meeting
As part of launching the Cartas de Paz program, we would love to meet you, share additional updates, and answer your questions. We’re working out the details to do this via Zoom, and will share more soon!
How to contact us
We have created a new email address for Cartas de Paz: cartasdepaz@casadepazco.org.
If you have questions about the program or need assistance, please email us at that address, and one of us will get back with you quickly!
With gratitude,
The Cartas de Paz coordinator team
