Volunteer Correspondents needed for incarcerated individuals

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In September 2020, we started the Unconditional Freedom Project, with the vision of turning prisons into monasteries. We launched the course with our book, The Art of Soulmaking, at a state facility in California. The Art of Soulmaking workbook teaches prison residents contemplative practices, along with meditation and yoga. Every student is paired with a volunteer to correspond with by mail as they journey through the course.

We currently have over 800 people enrolled in the program and our waitlist is growing each week as women inside hear about us from those in our program!

The staff and volunteer letter writers at The Unconditional Freedom Project put our pens and hearts to paper and have been writing to our incarcerated participants as they journey through soulmaking. Naturally, we get shaped in the process, learning to meet each person human-to-human and heart-to-heart. As the number of people in our program continues to expand, our network of trained volunteers who correspond with these women grows too. Our volunteers are made up of people from local community centers, senior homes, donors and friends from around the country.

This volunteer opportunity is to participate in the program called The Art Of Soulmaking. The program is centered around a workbook, broken up in to an 8-week outline, where you and a fellow "Soulmaker" exchange letters sharing your experience and getting to know one another as you read the book. "Soulmaker" is our word for your penpal, who is either in jail or prison, who has also signed up for the course.

The course is designed to deliver an experience of self-inquiry, contemplation, and transformation for people both living "behind the walls" and outside of them.

We offer the Art of Soulmaking workbook for free, downloadable online, along with an online platform through which you can receive training on letter writing, download your incoming letters, and submit your outgoing letters for review by a volunteer mentor prior to you physically writing and mailing your letter to your Soulmaker.

The letter writing training program is self-paced and takes around 20 minutes to complete. In the training you will learn the process of letter writing and also receive some tips on how to open an intimate dialogue with your Soulmaker and help create a foundation for healing and living in purpose.

The average duration of a volunteer engagement is 8 weeks, though in some cases both the volunteer and the Soulmaker behind the walls opt to exchange letters past the 8-week time period. This is entirely voluntary.

The entire engagement is anonymized, so in no case do you need to (nor do we recommend you to do) offer your full name or your physical address.

Volunteers often remark that feel they gain as much from the experience studying the book as they do corresponding with someone who is incarcerated, for many dissolving a mental or emotional barrier they may discover between "us" outside and "them" inside.

This volunteer program is 100% remote. You download your incoming letters online from our web platform, you submit your responses to the same platform for review by a mentor, and once your letter is finalized, you will print or hand write your letter and send it in the physical mail. We like to tell volunteers this upfront, so they know they can have envelopes and stamps on hand for this experience.

To sign up go to :

unconditionalfreedom.org/penpal

click: "I want to volunteer"

Fill out the form, and be certified in under 15 minutes!