Ameelio: Free Prison Communications

My name is Uzoma “Zo” Orchingwa, and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Ameelio. I am a joint-degree student at Yale Law School and Yale School of Management. Through the support of a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, a Truman Scholarship, and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, I have been able to pursue my passion for using technology to solve complex global problems. I hold an M.Phil in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, where I wrote my thesis on the history and causes of mass incarceration. Encountering mass incarceration through both academic and personal lenses––with several of my childhood friends having been incarcerated––has motivated me to think of pragmatic solutions like Ameelio, which can relieve short-term burdens for those experiencing incarceration while laying the groundwork for structural reform. My mission is to use what I have learned to concretely impact those affected by incarceration.

Mass incarceration is expensive ($182b spent annually), destructive (113m U.S. adults impacted), and ineffective (55% recidivism within 3 years). With a system so broken, it can be hard to know where to begin. We have identified a specific problem that we are determined to solve: prison communications costs.

Through Letters for Families, Letters for Organizations, and Connect (our forthcoming video conferencing platform), Ameelio will connect the 2.3 million incarcerated Americans to vital support networks outside. Our free communication tools enable supportive contact that can break the cycle of intergenerational harm and reduce recidivism by up to 13%, according to recent research. 

Ameelio will remove the financial barriers to connection, outcompete predatory actors, and reconnect families and communities torn apart by mass incarceration. Our vision is to shrink prison populations by building a truly rehabilitative justice system, one which holds compassion and rehabilitation as its core priorities. 

The U.S. criminal justice system is broken. The myth of “second chances” is provably false: 76.6% of released incarcerated people will be reincarcerated within five years. Families are often committed to supporting their loved ones on their journey of growth and rehabilitation – but barred by the perverse incentives of facilities and companies profiting from their loved one’s incarceration, their successes are limited.

Securus and Global Tel Link, the two dominating for-profit prison communications companies, charge families extortionately high prices just to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved ones. $25 for 15 minutes on the phone. $1 to send and receive a text. This financial burden disproportionately falls on the country’s most vulnerable individuals and communities. While the $1.2 billion prison telecommunications industry boasts 50% profit margins and prison facilities profit off kickbacks from these companies, one in three families falls into debt due to the high cost of connecting with an incarcerated loved one.

Through free communications tools, Ameelio will liberate vulnerable families from the grips of exploitative monopolies, and create a new, trusted communication channel between incarcerated people and their support networks outside. This is an essential first step towards building a rehabilitative justice system. 

We offer three products:

Letters: send free letters and photos to any incarcerated person in the U.S. Simply type your letter, attach photos, and click “send”. We’ll print, mail, and track it, all the way to the facility.

Letters for Organizations: amplifying the impact of criminal justice organizations. We connect reentry organizations with incarcerated people nearing their release dates. Reducing recidivism requires coordinated reentry support: we connect recently incarcerated people to organizations assisting with employment, housing, healthcare, legal support, and more. 

Connect: the nation’s first free video conferencing platform. Video calls are the closest approximation to in-person contact; yet, as current providers expand into video calling, their practices remain as unethical as ever. Their services are low-quality and expensive. Some providers offer video calling as a replacement for in-person visits, raising new barriers between the incarcerated and their loved ones. Our free alternative will displace these providers and connect the incarcerated with families and friends, for free. Moreover, we will be a channel for remote prison programming: educational resources, mental health services, legal support, job interviews, and more. 

We will boost incarcerated people’s post-release outcomes and transform the carceral system to place humanity, not profits, at its forefront.

Our primary impact is with incarcerated individuals and their loved ones. Letters can provide powerful emotional and psychological support for the incarcerated. One of our users, Nikki, said her letters are like “little treasures” to her husband, who re-reads them whenever he needs a reminder of his support system outside. Many users attach to their letters family photographs or beautiful vistas to lift their loved ones’ spirits. Further, through Letters for Organizations, we are supporting the work of criminal justice organizations who share our mission of decarceration through compassion.

Since day one, we've worked closely with our users. Our 45 Ameelio ambassadors––individuals who love our product and have volunteered to share it with their communities––are the face of our organization. Four of our ambassadors are currently incarcerated, spreading the word of Ameelio within the justice system. 

27 million Americans have an immediate family member who is currently incarcerated. 6 million of these are children, separated from parents and siblings. Another user told us, “My son has been using [Ameelio] and he loves it. He uses it to write my husband and my brother, he is 11 years old.” This is our target: reconnecting families and building community.

Our project seeks to elevate incarcerated individuals, as well as their families and friends. The telecommunications industry has failed to connect those who need it most: those separated from their loved ones by bars and fees but in dire need of support. It should be both free and straightforward for incarcerated people and their loved ones to communicate. Beyond removing communications burdens, our platform can help reconnect spouses, parents and children, and old friends. By supporting rehabilitation and reentry, we are delivering the promise of clemency, and granting real second chances to a population long tacitly abandoned by our society.

Through my research at Cambridge, I found that policy measures to decarcerate the U.S. were many years away from implementation. I began searching for an interim solution to improve the lives of those impacted by mass incarceration. 

While reading reports about reducing recidivism, I encountered compelling research detailing the positive impact of increased communication on post-release outcomes: increased communication during incarceration has been shown to reduce recidivism rates and improve mental health. This was an area where I could have a real, tangible impact on people’s lives while paving the way to decarceration. 

I met Ameelio’s technical co-founder Gabe Saruhashi at a coffee shop in New Haven in 2019. We bonded over Gabe’s passion for social entrepreneurship and discussed his experiences in the technology sector. After meeting Gabe, I realized that my vision for a prison communications solution could become a reality. We began brainstorming immediately, but didn’t anticipate launching for a while. Then, COVID-19 hit. Prisons went on lockdown; the incarcerated and their families were torn further apart during a frightening period, both inside prisons and out; and the urgency of our solution rocketed. Within a few weeks, we launched Letters, and we have grown steadily ever since. 

My commitment to criminal justice reform dates back to my early teens, when several of my childhood friends were incarcerated. It is not merely the fact of their incarceration that troubles me; it is that their race and socio-economic status almost guaranteed this outcome. 1 in 4 black men will be incarcerated in their lifetime. Meanwhile, children in families experiencing incarceration are demonstrably more likely to become incarcerated, due in part to financial, psychological, and emotional strain. 

Despite research demonstrating the beneficial effects of increased contact on decreasing recidivism and lowering the likelihood that children in families experiencing incarceration become incarcerated themselves, maintaining such communication is not an industry priority. Instead, companies whose only interest is reaping profits decide which families are allowed to stay in touch: those who can afford to pay unreasonably high rates for phone calls or drive long distances for in-person visitation.

The inhumanity of our justice system falls heavy not only on those it incarcerates, but on their spouses, children, parents, and friends. The ripple effects of incarceration destroy communities like mine. I truly believe that Ameelio can reduce the inevitability of intergenerational incarceration, and inspire others to innovate alongside us to eliminate it entirely.

Ameelio’s team of over forty volunteers includes formerly incarcerated individuals, students of all disciplines, lawyers, programmers, and criminology experts. We have the technical experience needed to build our solutions and a shared vision of transforming the criminal justice system. I am a dual-degree student at Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management, and previously received an M.Phil in Criminology at the University of Cambridge. Gabe is a Yale software engineer with previous experience at Facebook and as a Product Manager at Zippi, a Y Combinator-backed startup. With diverse experiences, academic backgrounds, and skill-sets, we are well-positioned to innovate technological solutions that are grounded in social, economic, and political theories of change. 

More importantly, Gabe and I have a personal commitment to eliminating inequity that makes us the right people to build this project. Children of the developing world (Brazil for Gabe; Nigeria for myself), we grew up understanding the precarity of low-income life. To us, the incarceration crisis and its attendant consequences are best understood as an economic phenomenon, long guided by the invisible hand of inequality. We both rose from our circumstances due to a large dose of luck, and are keenly aware that our stories are exceptions to a much crueler rule. This is why we are so committed to lifting financial burdens from low-income families, breaking up exploitative monopolies, and supporting the economic and social rehabilitation of those impacted by incarceration. Our free, nonprofit model is the foundation of this commitment.

Our initial plan for Letters was a limited launch in March 2020, focusing on high-trust channels in the New Haven area. We would reach out to potential users in-person and collect feedback before making our product publicly available. 

COVID-19 heightened the urgency of our work, and required us to completely change our user growth strategy. We used virtual channels like Facebook to acquire users. Changing our approach was a blessing in disguise: we met our Ameelio Ambassadors, users who volunteered to post and share Ameelio in groups for incarcerated loved ones. They have helped us reach thousands of new users, and are key members of the Ameelio team. 

We have also learnt to respond to challenges rapidly and flexibly. Six weeks ago, we were sending 300 letters a week; now, we send over 500 letters a day. We’re serving nearly 6,000 users across 49 states and 27 countries. Our growth has launched us into challenges that, in an ideal world, we would have ironed out during limited launch: confusing UX copy, uncertainties about whether to ask users for “tips”, issues with facilities. Yet, we recognized the urgency created by COVID-19, and accepted the risks. We’re glad that we did.

I studied at Colby College for undergrad. By my race and class, I was an anomaly: most students hailed from wealthy prep schools. For inner city kids, and for 3% of students who were African American, acclimating was tough. Colby exemplified inequities that pervade the country. Custodial staff weren't paid a living wage. A Black student was physically abused by campus police while sleeping in the Black students' community center. My Black peers felt ostracized and dismissed.

That these inequities remained largely invisible was indefensible. Weren’t we spurred to live the principles we espoused in the classroom? As Professor Jill Gordon once told me: theory without action is meaningless. Yet here we were, pontificating theories of equality and civil rights while injustice thrived around us. A collective reckoning was needed. I posted my grievances on our community forum and called a meeting. 60 people showed.

In my remaining three years, I mobilized a movement: we wrote op-eds, produced documentaries, won over professors, and pressured the administration to mandate race and class dialogue. I saw concrete changes: campus-wide town halls, our documentary added to the curriculum. But more profoundly, we shifted "fringe" issues to the center of campus dialogue.

Ameelio takes an innovative approach to decarceration. We recognize that policy changes will take a long time. In the meantime, those trapped in our justice system will continue to suffer its inhumanity. We begin with our products. We built Letters to those with disabilities, who cannot write physical letters; those without the means to buy stamps to write letters each day; and those without easy access to a post office. We designed Connect for families who live hundreds of miles or oceans apart from their incarcerated loved ones; for overworked public defenders without time to drive to each of 200 clients per week; and for reentry organizations whose reintegrative services rely on a relationship of trust with incarcerated people. 

Free prison communication will serve not only those impacted by incarceration, but our entire society. A reduction in recidivism means reductions in crime. Supporting connections between families, friends, and neighbors means stronger communities. A truly “correctional” system must include shrinking the $80bn spent on mass incarceration, and reducing the profits reaped from it. 

The prison telecommunications industry is already in decline. Providers’ reputations have been tarnished by security breaches and exploitative practices, and these companies’ stock prices are collapsing. There are lawsuits against providers in Maryland, Massachusetts, and elsewhere; kickbacks and commissions, which bind DOCs to current providers, are already illegal in 11 states. By providing better products at a lower cost, Ameelio will demonstrate that a nonprofit model can provide a sustainable alternative to the ethically indefensible status quo.

We believe that change begins by listening closely to those bearing the burdens of mass incarceration, and building solutions to lessen those burdens. Our first priority is to reduce the cost of prison communications. Research shows that prohibitively high communications costs damage families and increase recidivism. Through Letters and Connect, we will lift financial burdens from low-income families and interrupt the poverty-to-prison pipeline. 

Second, we believe ethical arguments must be complemented by financial incentives to garner lasting change. Profit is incompatible with decarceration: so long as profit margins and prison populations expand in tandem, decarceration is disincentivized. Thus, we are harnessing market forces to outcompete bad actors in the prison communications space. Our free alternatives will undercut the margins of incumbents, and accelerate the collapse of the exploitative for-profit prison telecoms industry. 

Third, we believe that innovation accelerates legislative change. Twelve states have already eliminated the kickbacks that correctional facilities receive from telecoms providers – yet, without alternatives, facilities continue to contract with predatory providers. Ameelio is the alternative these facilities are waiting for: a nonprofit provider of lower-cost, higher-quality services. The successful rollout of Connect in these facilities demonstrates the feasibility of a kickback-free, nonprofit business model, and strengthens the case of advocates fighting to end kickbacks nationwide. That’s why we’ve received support from politicians across the political spectrum; Worth Rises, the leading advocate for free prison phone calls; progressive DOCs; and countless individuals tired of waiting for policy change. 

Finally, we believe that transforming the criminal justice system requires a collective reckoning. The American public is more receptive now than ever: 95% of Americans support criminal justice reform. Yet, policy cannot be penned in an echochamber: we need stronger channels of communication between those locked in the system, and those outside who are ready to fight for change. As a trusted conduit between incarcerated people, their loved ones, and criminal justice organizations, Ameelio has a unique ability to raise visibility of the incarcerated and their stories. With the help of Elevate, we will amplify the voices of a historically silenced population, and catalyze a national reckoning.

We measure our organization-wide impact in “number of lives improved.” To date, Letters for Families has connected 10,700 people through over 27,000 free letters –  an exchange that uplifts people inside and outside prison walls. As we spread the word through social media, canvassing, and our ambassador programs, Ameelio expects our Letters userbase to expand at a 6% weekly growth rate, reaching 220,000 users within the next year and 5 million users within five years. Our goal is to serve the estimated 27 million Americans with incarcerated loved ones, 6 million of whom are children. Raising visibility through flexible media forms –– including film, social media posts, podcasts, and more –– could massively impact our growth rate.

Within the next year, we plan to secure several initial pilot sites and finish developing our Connect platform. In the next 5 years, we plan to provide free video conferencing in detention and correctional facilities nationwide. We hope that eventually, all people with incarcerated loved ones can use our services to communicate face-to-face with their parents, children, spouses, and friends. 

As we continue to operate Letters and scale our Connect platform nationally, Ameelio will create the economic and social pressure required to write permanent legislation that outlaws the profit incentives that fuel mass incarceration. Legislative change would meaningfully affect millions of families across the country––especially Black, Brown, and low-income Americans––for generations.   

Within the next year: 

• Run a yearlong pilot of Connect video conferencing in at least one facility. We have already secured one partner site; we are looking to partner with several more by 2021.

• Leverage our ambassador program and social platforms to expand the Letters user base among families and organizations.

• Build new partnerships with criminal justice organizations involved in education and reentry, and amplify their reach through Letters and Connect

• Raise visibility of the issue of high prison communications costs on the national level.

• Engage in strategic storytelling campaigns to amplify the historically silenced voices of incarcerated individuals, raising awareness for criminal justice reform and our own projects.

In the next five years:

• Secure free video conferencing in at least ten of 12 states that have outlawed kickbacks and in at least 5 county jails in states that still allow kickbacks.

• Outcompete our exploitative peers in the prison communications space with our high-quality, low-cost product alternative.

• Create the social pressure and market incentives needed to permanently end kickback schemes nationwide.

• Launch the Trends platform, a data collection tool, to motivative and inform further legislative change, curbing mass incarceration and its disproportionate effects on low-income communities and communities of color.

  • Use Trends to measure our own efficacy, tracking whether Ameelio users have lower recidivism rates.

• Launch Pay to allow users to send commission-free money transfers to incarcerated loved ones. Launch Jobs: in-prison training & early introductions to employers to boost the employment rates of formerly incarcerated individuals.

• Financial Sustainability: As a nonprofit organization, our most significant barriers to success may be financial. Ameelio is currently 100% self-funded, dependent on grants, donations from patrons, and contributions from criminal justice organizations. 

• Installation of Connect: We may face some hardware obstacles as we install Connect in prisons as we will be working in physical spaces that are less conducive to modern technology. 

• Messaging: Ameelio is laying the groundwork for long-term, systemic change to the criminal justice system. One of our major challenges is communicating how our mission fits into our radical ambitions, especially while balancing such messaging with language that appeals to conservative stakeholders, including the administrators of prisons we hope to partner with.

• Landing Contracts: Due to kickbacks and long-standing relationships with these private companies, it is possible that correctional facilities outside our pilot programs will be slow to switch to our services, despite improved quality and cost savings for families. 

• Competition: One potential barrier to our success could be retaliation from the deeply entrenched for-profit players in the prison communications space. If companies like Securus and Global Tel Link feel threatened, they might begin aggressive campaigns against our products and services.

• Financial Sustainability: We plan to be self-sustaining. While we will always keep communication free for the families of the incarcerated, we have capped the number of free letters per month, with an option for a paid unlimited plan. Most of our partner organizations pay to send letters on our platform. As we launch Connect, we will seek government grants and bid for paid contracts with corrections facilities to drive revenue. 

• Technical Support: Our skilled team of engineers and technicians is prepared to work around any hardware challenges. 

• Messaging: The harms of mass incarceration––personal, social, and economic––escape no one. Even our most conservative partners will benefit from reductions in recidivism and improvements to prison culture that reduce violence and ease the work of correctional officers. We have already built relationships with Departments of Corrections and conservative politicians. With strategic support, we can tell a story that speaks to all stakeholders. 

• Landing Contracts: Many correctional facilities are looking to depart from companies like GTL and Securus. We have received interest from seven possible partner facilities, and have secured a Letter of Intent for our pilot program at a county jail in Pennsylvania. We are building momentum through word-of-mouth from progressively-aligned DOCs, organizations, and politicians.

• Shields to Retaliation: We have pro bono support from several V100 law firms, who are equipped to defend us should for-profit peers try to hinder our work. We believe we will also be protected by the national attention we have begun to attract through media coverage.

To deliver our Letters product, we partner with Lob, a third-party mailing service, that is used by companies like Twitter to send mass mail. 

Through Letters for Organizations, Ameelio is currently partnered with twenty criminal justice and reentry groups, including PEN America, Focus Reentry, Forgotten Man Ministries, and Dance To Be Free. Through our platform, these organizations can send and manage mail to incarcerated contacts. Mailings include legal, educational, and mental health resources to support incarcerated individuals while in prison as well as vital information to prepare for reentry. Our partner organizations also contribute to Ameelio’s financial sustainability. Many of these organizations can afford to “pay it forward,” covering not only the cost of their mailings but also of users’ on our Letters for Families platform. Ameelio will continue to seek and build strong relationships with our partners.

For Connect, we have made significant progress in finalizing a pilot site, including obtaining a unanimous “yes” vote and Letter of Intent from one county jail’s Prison Board of Directors, cementing their commitment to becoming our first pilot location. We are currently in discussions with several more potential pilot facilities, both on the county and state level. 

We’ve also partnered with foundations and technology nonprofit accelerators including the Mozilla Foundation, Blue Ridge Labs (affiliated with Robin Hood Foundation), and Fast Forward. They have provided us with useful advice, mentoring, and connections in addition to funding.

Our key beneficiaries are the incarcerated and their loved ones, and organizations that work with the incarcerated. 

For the incarcerated and their loved ones, we are lifting the financial burden of prison communications (up to $500 / month, users report), and supporting new modes of connection with their loved ones. We leverage existing technologies to rapidly build out our products: we partner with Lob, an automated mailing service, to send our letters. We will build Connect on top of free, publicly available video-conferencing and scheduling APIs. At present, we are funded by organizations who can afford to pay for our services, and grant-makers and donors committed to criminal justice reform. In future, we will also receive revenue from facilities who contract with us, state and federal grants, and lawyers using our services.

For organizations working with the incarcerated, we facilitate more effective and proactive outreach to the incarcerated. At the moment, reentry organizations must wait to be connected with newly released individuals or individuals nearing release. Yet their services depend on a relationship of trust, best built over months of communication. Ameelio uses publicly available incarceration records to connect organizations with incarcerated people months before their release dates, and send introductory flyers and resources to begin preparations for reentry. 

Our work will also demonstrate to prisons the benefits of rehabilitation. We will reduce recidivism, thereby reducing prison overcrowding. We will infuse prisons with social, educational, and mental health support, thereby reducing prison violence, and easing the work of correctional officers.

We currently rely on grants and donations. We are committed to keeping Ameelio free for the incarcerated and their loved ones, while running self-sustainably.

Letters for Families – We are developing a freemium model. We will always provide a free version of Letters for Families, but we have noticed substantial user demand for a paid version with the ability to send more letters, customize letters, and include premium content like games and special images. We are also adding an option for a paid unlimited plan.

Letters for Organizations – From industry research, we know there are groups willing to pay for a more efficient letter-mailing service to the incarcerated. Based on estimates, we can charge enough for each organization letter to fund a free letter for families, while still maintaining fair and reasonable prices to support the work of mission-aligned nonprofits. 

Connect – After a successful pilot, we hope to broker paid contracts for video conferencing with correctional facilities at the county, state, and federal levels, which will provide ongoing revenue sources. 

In addition, we know lawyers are highly dissatisfied with current channels of communication with incarcerated clients, and would be willing to pay for secure letters and video conferencing. We are developing add-ons specifically tailored to lawyers for both Letters and Connect.

Finally, we are actively seeking additional channels to increase revenue. One idea is an optional “tipping” system on our platform and increasing donations through an Ameelio Patron program.

Mozilla Foundation Spring “MVP” Lab: $10,000 grant, received April 2020

Fast Forward Accelerator: $25,000 grant, received June 2020

Robin Hood Foundation / Blue Ridge Labs Catalyst: $60,000 grant, received June 2020

Individual Donations: $75,000, received over the past three months. This includes $34,500 from Kickstarter to date (we raised 110% of our Kickstarter Goal in the first 5 days of our month-long campaign, which will continue through the month of July).

We estimate that it will cost ~$300,000 for us to run our pilot program, providing free video conferencing at zero cost to each of four partner sites. We are asking for Elevate to fund the entirety of our pilot program. This infusion of capital will act as a ‘spark’: funding from Elevate will provide us the resources to fully build out our software and mobile app, source hardware, hire field technicians and project managers, and demonstrate the feasibility of our solution. Many of these costs, particularly those spent on the development of our proprietary software, are one-time-only. After this trial, we plan to convert to paid contracts with facilities to cover the costs of hardware installation maintenance and expansion.

Overall, we are seeking to raise $3 million over the next 12 months to launch and scale our Connect video conferencing platform, and to continue to expand the reach and depth of our Letters products. At the moment, we are primarily looking at grant funding for our operations and scaling. However, we are open to considering debt and equity funding if necessary for the success of our mission.

Letters for Families: $192,800 (at 6% weekly growth rate) 

Letters for Organizations: N/A. Self-sustaining. 

Connect Video Conferencing Pilot (four partner sites):

• Software development (two full-time senior engineers, 1-year contract): $150,000

• Product manager: $52,200 

• Salaries for field technicians: $20,000

N.B. We have only one paid employee at present. The remaining ~50 members of our team are volunteers.

• 25 tablet stations each for four mid-sized facilities (~500 inmates each): $35,000

• Internet & data storage (at nonprofit rates): $50,000

Total: $500,000

We are applying for the Elevate Prize at a pivotal point in our project. Having successfully launched Letters for Families and Letters for Organizations, we now seek to connect families for free, in real time. The Elevate Prize could help us fund this revolutionary next step: Connect. As we scale our free video conferencing platform nationwide, the Elevate prize would provide us the resources to build out our software, source hardware, hire a field technician and project manager, and demonstrate the feasibility of our solution to other facilities nationwide. 

The truly transformative element of the Elevate Prize, however, is its promise to help us create a “fanbase”, a movement. Greater visibility would not only allow us to reach all possible users, it would allow us to pursue in earnest our vision of transforming the criminal justice system through compassion and communication. We have moonshot dreams of documentaries about the impacts of incarceration on children; podcasts where our users can share their stories; wonky explainers on the origins of the exploitative prison telecoms industry. We have the unique relationships and industry knowledge to source these stories, but we need partners willing and able to tell them. The mentorship, network, and platform offered by the Elevate Prize would bring our moonshots into reach, and allow us to catalyze transformative social, legislative, and economic change.

With the launch of our Connect pilot imminent and Letters expanding quickly, we would benefit from guidance on establishing financial sustainability. We have started to explore several potential revenue streams, including our Letters freemium plan, and charging certain companies that use Letters for Organizations, we would be interested in discussing these and other options with experienced mentors.

We are also seeking marketing and media partnerships for advice on how to expand into new communities and geographic region, and how to create excitement about our mission among the broader public.

Finally, as a startup that has been operating for less than six months, but has already inspired over 50 volunteers to work remotely, we would benefit greatly from general coaching and mentorship on how to lead an organization that is both a product (communications tools) and a movement (towards decarceration and a rehabilitative justice system).

To truly transform the delivery of in-prison programming and reentry services, we would like to partner with organizations offering remote telehealth, educational, creative, religious, and legal services, who share our mission of decarceration through rehabilitation. We would like to partner with national initiatives like the Bard Prison Initiative and the Mellon Foundation’s “Million Book Project,” as well as state and local organizations. 

To spread awareness about prison telecommunications and amplify our users’ voices, we would like to partner with marketing, film, and media companies, as well as individual artists who share our values. Already, we are in talks with Outlier Society, Michael B. Jordan’s production company, about how best to share the powerful, moving stories that our users are waiting to tell. We would benefit from more connections to creatives interested in storytelling to push reform.