8-18 Media

Special to the Journal

Most seniors in nursing homes are isolated, with just doctors and nurses and maybe a few visitors from time to time to keep them company, and some of them don’t even have those, and even if they do, visitors typically come only little more than a few times per six months or even a year, and all the mail they get is usually junk mail. But one thing they love receiving is handmade cards. Even more than FaceTime or texts. And that’s where LAI comes in.

Letters Against Isolation (LAI) is a nonprofit organization where volunteers send letters to seniors in nursing homes. LAI was founded by Shreya Patel and her sister Saffron Patel in 2020 when both girls were in high school.

Caption could be something like: Shreya (left) and Saffron Patel (right) smile with their grandmother, Ba (center) in London earlier this year. The sisters were inspired to start up Letters Against Isolation when they realized that Ba felt lonely and isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy photo)

Patel was inspired to start LAI in 2020 due to her grandmother isolating in her home in the UK during the pandemic. Patel said, ” She hadn’t been outside to see her friends in three or four months at that point. My sister and I were always very close to her because she is an incredible woman and role model for us, and we were trying to make sure that she felt connected and loved by calling her and texting her every day. Even though we were trying to do our part, being so far away from her was difficult, and we saw the effects of loneliness and isolation take a toll on how she felt and how she acted, and it was heartbreaking for us. And we were trying to figure out how to help her. How can we make her feel loved, that connection, less lonely? And then this friend of hers sent her a handwritten letter and it was so simple, but it had a hand drawn rainbow on the front and I just remember seeing her beaming on Facetime for almost a week straight and so my sister and I realized there is something so powerful about a handwritten letter especially for that generation. So we figured we should start writing to my grandma but also to people who were close to us in Boston, and things just grew and grew from there.”

Patel said her favorite thing about LAI is just the fact that it has brought together such a diverse range of people. “I would have never met the people I met over the last four years if I hadn’t started LAI, right? It’s amazing how it has brought people together. People have made friends with seniors and made lasting pen-pal relationships with them, but also people in communities can form letter-writing circles and have that in-person connection.”

What is the average number of letters that LAI sends per week?

Patel said, “I think it is around 3,000 to 4,000 letters every week. During the holiday season, it goes up to 6,000 letters a week.”

Around the world, LAI sends to America, Canada, the UK, and in the past, they have had letters written to people in Israel, Abu Dhabi, and Scotland as well.

Shreya Patel and Lindsay Gramana (Courtesy photo)

Lindsay Gramana, a Marquette local who volunteers for LAI, explained why and how she got involved.

“So, I wrote to my grandma until she passed away last year, at least once a week and often more than that. It was a way for me to connect with her across the country because we lived so far away, and I got feedback from my family about how much she enjoyed that. I wanted to spread that to other folks during Covid, so I started looking around, and I thought about looking for a pen pal, but I liked the idea of sharing letters on my time with folks who may not be able to write back to me. I just looked around and found Letters Against Isolation, and I realized that the same letters I wrote grandma, I could also send to other people,” Gramana said.

Gramana’s role in LAI is that of lead community service liaison. ” I oversee the student community program, and I work behind the scenes at LAI to support students earning community service credit. We have a set of guidelines to follow to make sure that their letters meet our mission and come across as caring and connecting. We have about seven liaisons that work with students. None of us are paid, so we also work together to support each other. I’m also part of the leadership team. I help administrate our user portal, which volunteers log onto to find out where to mail their letters, and I help the group reach out to volunteers.”

The number of people in LAI varies over the year. “We do have a busy time over the holidays, even though we folks do not write about holidays because we are an all-inclusive organization. People do just try to find extra ways to give around the holidays. We have anywhere from 500 to 1000 different writers per cycle for two weeks and tens of thousands of volunteers in more than four years,” she explained.

Anybody can join LAI. “Parents can join and have their two-year-old draw pictures that they can share with a senior, and everybody has their own unique style. Some folks make homemade cards and a shorter message, others write really long letters, and the way people can join is on our website,” Gramana said.

Gramana believes that receiving a letter from a stranger who just took the time out of their day to share a little bit about themselves is pretty cool. “People just light up when somebody comes around with the mail. Some people have reported feeling sad, lonely, and depressed, and suddenly they received a letter and it turned their whole life around. We also write in 30 different languages, so some folks have said that they received a letter in their native tongue for the first time in many years, so that’s another special feeling.”

According to Gramana, you get to choose the location where your letter will be sent. “We have a database, and you can filter by state, country, or language. We also have a special section for high-priority individuals who haven’t received as many letters as others. You can also choose by facility category, like Meals On Wheels. You don’t know the name of the person that you are going to write to, so you always write, “Dear Friend,” and then someone at the facility will review them and distribute them.”

If you would like to join LAI and make seniors smile, you can sign up at lettersagainstisolation.com, and you can fill out a form to be put on the mailing list. Writing a letter can brighten someone’s day.