There was an air of excitement and anticipation as Shippensburg Community Participation Supports (CPS) participants expectantly awaited their first Penpal exchange… just in time for Valentine’s Day. As their names were called, each individual collected the envelope containing the handwritten “All About Me” message from their designated Penpal.

When Shippensburg CPS Coordinator Jasmyn W. first conceived the idea of a PenPal outreach, she had no idea what level of interest, if any, the participants would have. When all was said and done, she had 80 individuals from 12 CPS locations who signed up to become Penpals.

One of Jasmyn’s primary goals with the Penpal outreach was to help participants improve their gross motor skills by working on hand function and coordination. She also wanted to find a way to promote and practice literary, communication, socialization, and relationship-building skills among participants, especially following the isolation brought on by a global pandemic.

The Penpal program seems on its way to accomplish all that… and so much more.

Monday, February 13, was the “great reveal” of the first round of PenPal mail responses at CPS Shippensburg. If their reaction was any indication, it looks like the start of some newfound friendships. Jasmyn beamed at the reactions of participants when reading letters from their Penpals. They shared their excitement as they found common ground with their Penpals… in colors, food preferences, sports teams, books and movies, and more. One individual called out “I like football too! I’m a Steelers fan!” While another said, “Purple is my favorite color too!” And a third went so far as to ask, “Can I ask my Penpal when we can meet in person?”

Doing all the legwork to pull together an effort like this—randomly matching up 80 individuals (a number of whom cannot read or write) into 40 pairs… figuring out a way to get the exchange up and running on no budget (so postage expenses would not be incurred) … and then rolling it out across 12 different CPS sites was quite the process, Jasmyn acknowledged. “It took a lot of time outside of work hours to coordinate the details of a plan with so many moving parts,” she explained. “But seeing their excitement today when they got their first letters from their Penpals was beyond fulfilling. The plan now is to have them do a Penpal exchange once a week. Then, over time, as we identify common interests among individuals from different locations, we’ll see about scheduling field trips to the same place at the same time. Say, for example, to a certain museum, or a favorite park come springtime.”

For Jasmyn, a 2021 Social Work/Disability Studies graduate from Shippensburg University, that would be a great end goal: helping individuals get out into the community, visiting places they want to go, to meet up with people with whom they have formed relationships.

Strategically speaking, Jasmyn sees the Penpal program as an opportunity to have a long-term meaningful impact in other areas of their life as well. “I really want this program to help them gain and improve their communication, relationships, and functional life skills so that they can better utilize them in other aspects of their lives.”