Friendship Circle finds creative ways to build friendships during COVID through friends receiving old fashioned letters!
Friendship Circle of Virginia launched its new pen pal program, Friends With Pens, just two months ago and now over 45 youth with disabilities are receiving letters of friendship in their mail boxes.
Opening mail has become so much fun!
Provides Joy
For our friends with disabilities, Friends With Pens provides the joy and excitement of opening real, old fashioned snail mail addressed just to them.
To help make writing easier and more fun, our dedicated staff designs and sends a new template with a theme to all our teens every two weeks with writing and drawing prompts to send to their friends. The same blank template is sent to their friends with disabilities in case they want to write back. Many already have!
45 Matches Created
Since launching the program less than one month ago, 45 new Friends with Pens matches have been created! The program attracted 18 new families with children with disabilities and 24 new Teen Friends.
Friends With Pens is an expansion of our signature Friends@Home Division and has been a creative and fresh way to experience joy during COVID when the world looked so dark. We are proud that Friendship Circle has been providing so much light through friendship and social connection during these times.
One member named Jaxx used to attend Friendship Circle monthly programs regularly when he was younger. Unfortunately, Friends@home was not possible with the family’s schedule. Even when Friends@home went virtual it was too difficult for Jaxx to communicate via the computer. Then his mom signed him up for Friends with Pens! His mother was so excited when Jaxx received his letter that she posted on social media, “Thanks for bringing joy to our children through the wonderful gift of friendship and belonging.”