
Show HN: Ameelio – Free and Open Source Prison Communication Platform (Part II) - jessehorne
A couple of months ago I made a post here announcing the launch of Letters, the first application developed by Ameelio (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ameelio.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ameelio.org</a>), a non-profit organization committed to making communication free between incarcerated people and their loved ones. Letters allows users to sign up, type a letter to their loved-one in prison&#x2F;jail and we handle printing, packaging, stamping and shipping through USPS. It&#x27;s still totally free and unlimited. We&#x27;ve also have went open source. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ameelio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ameelio</a>)<p>When I made the post on HN (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23042558" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23042558</a>), announcing the launch, we received SO much support. Many of you contacted us and wanted to contribute. With your help, we were able to scale our operations, we gained several amazing teammates and we developed an amazing product that&#x27;s serving over 5,500 users who&#x27;ve sent around 23,000 letters to their family and friends that are incarcerated. The impact we&#x27;ve made already has been incredible.<p>Letters has been a huge success and we&#x27;ve been planning some things to make it even better. We&#x27;ve revamped the UI with more enhancements coming soon. The next stage for Letters is to focus on scalability and extend functionality to make letters sent from our platform more personal, helpful and even entertaining. We&#x27;ll be adding games that users can send to their loved ones such as Sudoku, Crossword puzzles and even potentially pop-out board games (TBD). Also, we&#x27;ll be adding different formats for mail, such as Postcards.<p>In the coming months, we&#x27;ll be planning and developing Connect, which will be the first-ever free platform for sending messages and having video calls with incarcerated people. We already have a pilot site!<p>We&#x27;ve also just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us keep up the momentum. You can find it here...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ameelio&#x2F;ameelio-app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ameelio&#x2F;ameelio-app</a><p>I hope this community has enjoyed the update on Ameelio and I look forward to hearing your response.<p>Thank you, HN!
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gabesaruhashi
Hey y'all again! I am one of the co-founders. Just wanted to highlight that
our growth statistics cannot capture our impact. Countless users have reached
out to thank us and describe Ameelio’s impact on their lives:

I can't tell you how much difference your organization has made for me and my
loved one… my LO gets one 15min call per day... how can you keep a father-
child relationship strong with that? it rips families apart... you have been
able to help... it means a lot... thanks again.

— Steven

Thank u for everything it really helps cause money is so tight and I can’t
afford stamps. I'm choosing stamps to talk to my husband or my heart meds that
are expensive. I don't have insurance. — Savannah

I live in Australia and my husband is incarcerated in PA, so obviously
communication is a massive part of our relationship, especially in written
format. One factor that most USA residents doesn't have to face, is a monetary
factor of sending snail mail, for me to send a card or letter from here to
him, it's costs me $3.20 AUD, over $2 USD, so Ameelio is such a cost saving
thing for us. I love how informed we are of the status of the letter and that
I can send a pic every single time. It's helped me hold things together for us
as a couple. When the facility was on total lockdown, mail was still getting
thru, but letters I'd sent from early April have only just arrived, yet
letters I sent via Ameelio all arrived within a week (at worst). It gave hubby
peace of mind knowing I was okay out here and that I was thinking of him in
there. WIthout those letters, who knows what his mental health would have been
like. Thank you Ameelio, we both appreciate this wonderful service.

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lhs__
awesome idea. makes no sense that incarcerated people & their families are
paying such steep prices while the rest of us are using hangouts, zoom,
facebook, whatsapp, etc for free

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jessehorne
I agree totally. It's wrong.

