Instead of a pen pal system, we follow more of a "message-in-a-bottle" format. With our exchanges, you never know if the letter you sent or received are to/from the same person each time - everything is anonymous and (for the most part) randomized. There's still a chance that both people will end up receiving each other's letters again, but they wouldn't know for sure.

Why do we do things this way? As you might imagine, there are certain pressures and judgments that can get attached to a pen pal relationship that we're trying to give people a chance to avoid. A back-and-forth exchange with someone puts pressure on a person to always have something to say back even when they don't want to, which can make people close up and sour the established relationship. Furthermore, it makes it harder for people to feel like they can be truly themselves and share their stories the first time they write a letter, because a established relationship with someone else means that they will be vulnerable to the judgment of someone else - and they'll hear and have to acknowledge that judgment. Our writers have found themselves worried about grammar, sentence pairing, etc. in such exchanges. A one-time relationship makes sure that both sides carefully gets the most that they can out of each letter by being very empathetic and thoughtful about the reading process, and it eases the fear of judgment or long-term burdens for the writing process.

Additionally, as great as our intentions are, most people are not trained in mental health support! When we write to someone in a pen pal exchange, there's an implicit expectation that they'll acknowledge and try to respond back to the concerns we voiced. But honestly? Sometimes people aren't that great at giving advice, sometimes the writer didn't need advice, and sometimes people try to say something helpful but, because they are untrained, end up maybe making things more confusing. With a randomized process, you can still write your own story (you don't need to re-explain yourself every time!) and what you feel like. Almost like sharing a journal entry! You just don't have to worry about not knowing how to respond to someone or saying the wrong thing back.

Also, in the navigation of our mental health and life stories, oftentimes we find that we need to redefine or reevaluate a part of our narrative or try another way of approaching it. In other words, we believe that people deserve the chance to start afresh: on a blank slate, you have the power to finally embody who you want to be. When you are confined to exchanging letters with the same person, sometimes it can feel too constricting, like you're stuck in the same narrative as you had first introduced to the other person.

We hope this helps explain the format we've chosen! There are a lot of social media and online groups established to help people find pen pals, so if you still want a pen pal, try looking for one of those (note that we don't endorse any specific ones).

Letters can go to anyone - in Chapters, they go to students/peers/community partners, and on our online platform, they can go to all of the above plus members of the general public. Given our target audience, most of the recipients have some sort of mental health concern, but it is a very wide spectrum. So writing letters to strangers in general becomes a literal manifestation of the namesake - you're writing to a "stranger", no matter the medium through which your letter is exchanged!

We also curate letters from the ones submitted and put them into bundles to also give to specific partners, such as hospitals and juvenile prisons (see here for more information), but these vary depending on need and location. Hence, we ask people to write without making assumptions about what the recipient is like or who they are.

Yes, of course! First of all, hey - don't put yourself down like that. :) The whole point of a letter is to reflect our thoughts and emotions, which means reflecting you. So as long as you write from the heart and stay genuine, your letter is perfect. It's not about how poetic or rhythmic or thematic you can make your letter sound. It's about you and your human connection with a stranger. That's all that matters. In other words, it's the spirit that counts, not the exact words you use.

Yes! Right now, most of our programming is in English, but we're working hard on creating multilingual resources all the time. In the meantime, feel free to submit a letter anyway even if your English proficiency isn't perfect - as long as you get your message across, the reader will love it anyway. :) Or you can draw, fold origami, or even write music for your letters! Don't let language hold you back.

And if you want to get involved in our other activities, we could always use multilingual and multicultural translators, supporters, advocates, and more. So reach out to us! You can do so in the language you feel most comfortable in, and we'll do our best to have a team member/volunteer who knows you language respond.

Because some of our Chapters are started by individuals or located in communities that wish to remain anonymous/protected (especially since many of them are minors), we don't release a public list of every single Chapter. You can always email us with your general region and we'll let you know if there's a Chapter near you or if perhaps you might want to start one! :)

We receive many inquiries from people and organizations that want to host a letter-writing event with their audience or peers. We always appreciate your enthusiasm! Here are a few things to keep in mind if you'd like to do so:

Our letter exchange protocol is primarily designed for a physical letter exchange between members or partners of our Chapters (usually found on school campuses but can be in general communities as well) since we have a peer discussion program that follows it. Therefore, we always encourage people to first explore if forming a Chapter/club in their community is of interest. By being part of a Chapter, letter-writers become eligible for receiving volunteer hours that go towards the U.S. Presidential Volunteer Service Award, and Chapter members become part of our larger network benefitting from bonus points on scholarships, opportunities to converse with people like Miss Universe and internationally-renowned psychiatrists, chances to be featured by large networks such as NBC, and hundreds of resources created by our headquarters team over the years to teach everything from advocacy to mental health knowledge certification for free.

If a Chapter isn't the right path for you right now, that's totally okay! From the general public, we typically accept letters submitted digitally to our free online platform. (If you are from the general public but want to submit physical letters, please read our FAQ answer to "I want to mail a physical letter. Where should I mail to?".) On our digital platform, to best mimic the benefits we've seen with our in-person exchange protocol, there is an element of exchange where every letter that gets submitted (and approved by our moderators) receives a letter back submitted by someone else (not necessarily in direct response to the letter that was originally sent, but just another letter in general that has been approved). The idea is to foster empathy between people, rather than accidentally having folks default to a "doing something to help a 'sufferer' " mindset that can sometimes end up making their letters read more greeting card-esque than with the sort of reflection/substance we prefer. Not saying that that's what people will write, but since the point is an exchange, we've found over and over that the takeaways people have are far stronger and longer-lasting when it's not just one-directional. If you want to know why we don't do direct exchanges between the same people, check out the other questions in our FAQ! :)

So, if you'd like to host a one-off, non-Chapter letter-writing event:

We encourage you to use the online platform by having folks sign up on there for free, ensure that everyone reads through the sample letters and letter-writing guidelines, and then have them submit the letters on the website itself. Our team will moderate letters in about 1-2 days, so if their letter was approved, they'll receive another person's letter in their account within that timeframe and also get an email notification about it.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:

If you need the letter-exchange to happen faster than 1-2 days:

You can reach out to us and we can see if we have any moderators who are available to be on standby during your event, but even then, keep in mind that each letter needs to be read in full first for the moderation to take place. Depending on how many letters you have, that can take a few hours! Therefore, you may benefit from having multiple members of your team take our Moderator Test instead. If they pass, then they can be on standby and divvy up the moderation duties during your event. Please plan to have folks take this test a few weeks before your event, so that if they do not pass the first time, they have ample time to review the resource materials and re-take the test.

NOTE: if you go this route, your moderators may see letters submitted by people from the general public during the time of your event, since the online platform is open to all. This is unlikely to surpass more than just a handful, so it shouldn't slow down the moderation process much even if your moderators were moderating it extra to what they intended to moderate (AKA more than just the letters that were submitted by participants of your event). However, if this is of concern to you, please read the sub-question below with instructions on how to create a "private" exchange for just your audience members on our website.

If you would like the letter-exchange to take place among your audience only, instead of to the general public:

Letters submitted to our online platform typically are exchanged with other members of the platform, which could be anyone from the general public. We've found that some organizations saw better engagement when letters were exchanged internally between their own audience members only, since their folks may be able to better speak to some of the shared community concerns (all anonymous still, of course). To make this work, you must contact us at hi[at]letterstostrangers[dot]org and we will set up a "Chapter ID" for you to use. Your members will need to input that Chapter ID in their online platform account "Settings", and click the box that says "for Chapter exchange" on the submit-a-letter page of the exchange platform. This will NOT register you as an official Chapter of Letters to Strangers - it's just the terminology we use. NOTE: This is usually a paid feature given the time it takes for us to set this up for you. If you are a student group, however, we typically will do it for free as long as you give us notice with ample time in advance.

Those who want to use this method must also have a moderator of their own, or consider hiring one from our team. You can have your team member(s) take our Moderator Test. Once they pass, as long as you let us know you'd like for them to be added as the moderator for your "Chapter" on the platform, your Chapter will be all set to go.

By exchanging internally, you can ensure that your moderators would only have to moderate letters submitted by folks participating in your event, instead of also potentially moderating letters from the general public. In addition, your moderators will have access to the favorite functionality, which will allow them to star any letters they see in their queue that they may want to highlight. We've had organizations in the past use this to curate some letters into an office break room display or website gallery. Of course, if you want to do this, you should let your members know that their letters may be (anonymously) displayed, and allow them to opt out of being selected via a method such as by writing "NOT FOR DISPLAY" at the top of their letter or something similar.

If you would like to receive a letter-writing workshop for your members, or in general have us help you out in more detail for your event:

We offer a number of paid services that you can browse through here, including a 30-minute letter-writing workshop, that can be used to help your event feel robust and completely taken care of. We can provide our highly-trained moderators so you don't have to deal with the moderation test yourself; we can create the custom "Chapter" ID functionality mentioned above, etc. Contact us for a quote by letting us know when, where, and how many people are expected for your event!

Thank you for being interested in our letter exchange program! You can submit & receive letters online via our letter exchange platform here (which will allow you to receive a letter back and earn rewards/badges). If you want to mail a physical letter to us, you can send directly to our HQ at:

Letters to Strangers

2058 North Mills Ave

#718

Claremont, CA 91711

USA

Please note that letters mailed to the HQ office will NOT receive a letter back and will not go toward your online badge(s) progress due to the sheer volume and the existence of the online platform. Also, we have to manually moderate, scan, and upload every single letter we receive in this manner to our database, which can take up quite a lot of time. So if you can at least upload the letters to our online platform (linked earlier) and let us know in your package that you've already done so (such as by writing so on a Post-It note), that'll save us a lot of time!

Note as well that our letter exchanges are designed to be facilitated in an in-person setting at our Chapters and Partner Sites so that we can have a therapy-informed peer discussion afterward. Much of our programming also happens outside of letter exchanges, such as with educational workshops, grassroots advocacy, and more. Therefore, if you want to stay involved with L2S in the future, consider joining a Chapter/Partner Site near you or starting one yourself! :)

While we used to sign off on volunteer hours for letter submissions, our mission ultimately focuses on quality over quantity. Volunteers who are not part of our network (through Chapters, Partner Sites, etc.) are always welcome, but processing one-time engagements that may emphasize quantity of hours versus the quality can take away important personnel and time from the rest of our programs in a manner that doesn't necessarily further our mission. Therefore, for now, we only give volunteer hours for letter-writing for those who are part of our network and engage with activities outside of one-time submissions. To learn more about how you can join our network, please check out our get-involved page here.

Great questions! Yes you can. Please read more about our general volunteering possibilities here and apply for positions you are interested in! :) You can also get volunteer hours for moderating on the letter-exchange platform, but you must first pass the moderation test at: https://forms.gle/ZMjJvThv6VsELFYy8

Yes and yes! You can find more information about our donor program here. Our U.S. tax-exemption number is 83-0837546. Thank you so much for donating to us! Every dollar means so much. Cheers!

Aw, thank you so much for thinking of us for this! You can book us via this link here. And yes, we do virtual talks!

Oh no! It's very possible that our response to you got filtered to spam, so please check that and/or add hi@letterstostrangers.org to your contacts list. We do our best to reply to all inquiries within 24 hours, so hopefully our email did make its way to you one way or another!

Note that if you are referring to a volunteer task, we may take a bit longer to respond because we have to review/edit what you sent over. Your patience is greatly appreciated!

Oops! Please reach out to us and a team member will get back to you ASAP. Thanks! :)