How it began
In 2019, Richard Holley joined a prison pen-pal program. He'd been thinking about it for a long time — the simple, quiet need that people inside have for someone on the outside to remember they exist. When he signed up, the program assigned him a man in the Texas Correctional System: Harold Jeff Morrison.
Richard sent his first letter through the U.S. mail. It was an ordinary letter — the kind of thing you'd write to anyone. He didn't know what to expect.
Jeff wrote back.
And then they kept writing. Several times a week, sometimes more. When Texas introduced tablet-based communication for incarcerated individuals — bringing electronic messaging, music, podcasts, and games inside — the friendship deepened further. Letters that used to take days to travel now arrived in hours. Jeff and Richard became, by every meaningful definition, friends.
From friendship to ministry
What started as one correspondence became a calling. Richard saw firsthand what most people on the outside don't get to see: that the men and women inside aren't a category of people, they're individuals — full of hope, humor, faith, regret, talent, struggle. Just like everyone else. The only thing that separated Jeff from Richard's circle of friends on the outside was a wall and a sentence.
Jeff's vision came from inside. From within the Texas Correctional System, he believed that connection and correspondence could change lives — that something real and good could be built from inside prison walls. His faith in that idea, combined with Richard's willingness to keep showing up week after week, became the seed of something bigger than either of them.
Together with Delilah Finkley Acquaah — a long-time friend of Richard's, bonded by shared faith — and with the support of Food For Children, Inc., the New York City-based not-for-profit hunger relief organization that Richard had been involved with for years, the three of them co-founded Jeff's Second Family Prison Pen-Pal Ministry.
The name was deliberate. Jeff isn't just the namesake — he's the heart of it. The ministry carries his name as a reminder that the people we serve are never just recipients of charity. They are leaders, brothers, sisters, family. Many of them taught us this work before we ever started doing it.
The people behind the ministry
Jeff's Second Family is built on three founders and one parent organization. None of us are professional non-profit operators. We're people who care, doing the work in the time we have, with the support of an established 501(c)(3) that handles the things we can't.
Jeff's Second Family is a program of Food For Children, Inc. — a not-for-profit hunger relief organization based in Flushing, New York. Food For Children, Inc. provides our 501(c)(3) status, our administrative backbone, and our mailing address. Their mission of feeding and supporting the poor — especially in developing nations — and ours of remembering the incarcerated come from the same root: the belief that no one should be forgotten.
Why this work matters
People often ask why anyone should write to someone in prison. The honest answer is this: because connection itself is a basic human need, and the absence of it is one of the most painful kinds of poverty there is.
Most of the men and women we correspond with don't need a savior. They don't need someone to "fix" them. They don't need pity. What they need — what most of us need, when you really think about it — is to know that someone on the outside knows their name. That someone notices when their letter arrives and writes back. That mail call brings something other than silence.
That's it. That's the whole thing. And it's enough.
"I was in prison and you came to me."
— Matthew 25:36
What we are — and what we aren't
We are a small, faith-based ministry. We are not a large organization with paid staff or a marketing department. Every dollar that flows through Food For Children, Inc. for this program goes to the work itself.
We are not a dating service. We are not a legal advocacy organization. We are not in the business of helping anyone get out, get appealed, or get money. Our volunteers are friends — not lawyers, not counselors, not benefactors.
What we are is simple: a community of people who write letters. Faithfully, over time, to people who might otherwise be forgotten. We're committed to dignity, to consistency, and to the slow work of friendship.
If that sounds like work you'd want to be part of, you're welcome here.