Can You Sponsor an Inmate By Mail?

SA’s Sponsor-by-Mail program, sponsored by SA’s Correctional Facilities Committee (CFC), is our primary means of carrying the SA message to prisoners. Unfortunately, at the CFC meeting this past May, we learned that the number of SA members available to sponsor prisoners by mail has been dwindling. For every 20 sponsees in prison who need sponsorship, we have approximately one sponsor! We also learned that SA members who have been serving as local CFC Chairs (at their local and Intergroup levels) have been carrying the bulk of the load.

We need your help desperately! In order to encourage more members to volunteer, we will offer a Sponsor-by-Mail workshop at the upcoming Baltimore convention. We would like to share with you what has worked for some SA groups. In particular, two fellowships in Northern California use a sponsor-by-mail meeting format. In those meetings, prisoners send letters containing Step work to members of the group. These letters are read in the meetings and then responded to by group conscience. In this way we sponsor prisoners as a group! We would like to share this experience with others.

Also, we recently learned that the first SA Women’s prison meeting has started in Duval County, Florida. While we are supporting these women as best we can, we are looking for an SA woman to serve on the CFC as leader of the Sponsor-by-Mail effort for women.

If you would like to help by sponsoring those less fortunate than us—who are trying to work the Steps while incarcerated—please contact me at sacfc1@gmail.com or by phone at 518-232-2210.

In Love and Service,