Letters Against Isolation

Mission: To fight senior loneliness one letter at a time.

Hi! We are Shreya and Saffron. At the start of the pandemic we did our best to support our isolated and lonely grandparents by calling them every day.

We realized that without visitors or the ability to interact with the wider world, many senior citizens were also facing increased isolation. Senior loneliness is a well-documented issue and has effects not only on seniors’ mental health but on their physical health as well. We believed that we could do something to help this situation and decided to spread joy by sending handwritten letters to residents of assisted living facilities and nursing homes. The demand for letters quickly outpaced us, and Letters Against Isolation was born! Our organization has since expanded to serve thousands of seniors in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

We’re an all-volunteer organization that mails cheerful, personal, handwritten cards and letters to isolated seniors in care facilities and senior programs in the Detroit area, across Michigan, throughout all 50 US states, and around the world. This is a safe volunteer-from-home opportunity that brings as much joy to our writers as it does to our recipients. We write to about 400 partner facilities in four different countries. Since April 2020, tens of thousands of volunteers have sent more than 1 million pieces of correspondence in 40 languages!

When you sign up as an LAI volunteer, we will provide you with a link to our online portal listing the names and addresses of our partner facilities around the world, the number of letters requested at each location and requests for letters in English and other languages. The portal is refreshed every two weeks, so there are always thousands of letter-writing opportunities available when you’re ready to write & mail your letters!