2025 December Letters Project

It’s that time of year: December Letters Project preparation time!

We invite you and/or your families, clubs, organizations, schools, and communities to be part of MITA’s – 2025 – December Letters Project. This is MITA’s annual local literacy project, but we encourage others to run a December Letters Project in their local communities if you’re not local to the greater western New York region.

The project’s goal is very simple: to send connection, support, and solidarity –in the form of cards and letters– to our neighbors who are in psychiatric institutions during the winter solstice! We do this by making secular but festive cards and letters, with messages of love and encouragement, during the months of November and December, and delivering them to local psychiatric hospitals at the end of December, on or near the solstice. November is the month to prepare for the project, so we invite you to join us in being part of our December Letters Project or to hold a project in your community.

If you are a teacher at a school or if you are part of an organization or community whose members care about social justice and about the treatment of people within mental healthcare systems, please consider being part of our project this year, either by writing cards with your group and dropping them off to your local mental health institution(s), by delivering your cards to us so that we can deliver them to our institutions, or by coming to our November MITA meeting to make cards with us, if you are local to the western New York area! If you want to help but cannot make cards, you can also donate card-making materials– we just ask that they be secular in their design. This is a great project to do with middle school, high school, and college students.

MITA will be holding our local card-making meeting on Sunday, November 30th, from 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM at Spot Coffee at the Main and Union intersection in Williamsville for card-making or for card drop-offs. If you cannot make it to our annual card-making meeting, but want to be part of the project, please contact us, at madwomenofwny@gmail.com, to make delivery or pick-up arrangements.

Last year, in 2024, we delivered over 700 heartfelt cards to our friends at the Buffalo Psychiatric Center and Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center. Local schools, churches, and organizations joined in the project to bring warmth, fellowship, and support to our friends in psychiatric hospitals.

Here are two of our December Letters OWLs, writing and delivering December Letters to our local institutions during the Winter Solstice in 2024:

Here are some of the cards we have delivered during last year’s (2024’s) DL project!

Check out two of MITA’s OWLs, reading aloud a December Letter they wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0TFFKD010Fw?feature=oembed

and

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6KdDGJ2Eu6Q?feature=oembed

About the December Letters Project

The December Letters Project is an annual feminist mental health literacy project and card/letter-writing campaign aimed at alleviating the isolation, loneliness, and stigma that often accompany inpatient stays at mental health institutions. By flooding our local MH institutions with support and love for our friends within those institutions during the winter solstice, through cards and letters, our goal is to build a bridge between institution and community. Groups and organizations anywhere can participate in the December Letters Project by reaching out to local MH institutions to build a bridge and to gather and deliver cards during the winter solstice. Locally, we come together with other community organizations, classes, groups, and schools to deliver cards annually to our friends at two local institutions: the Buffalo Psychiatric Center and WNY Children’s Psychiatric Center.

We rely on generous owls (aka letter-delivering community members) to participate in the project by writing secular winter-themed cards with messages of hope for our friends at the psychiatric hospitals in our area during the winter solstice. If you would like to be part of the project and to write secular cards and notes, you either make cards with us or deliver cards to us or contact us to arrange a delivery or pick-up. The cards and notes cannot be sealed, and we ask that you write something from your heart and your pen. Artistic creations on cards are welcomed and encouraged. We have students at schools who will be working with us on cards this year, in our local area and outside of it, but we need your help to make sure we have enough cards for every person admitted to the institutions to receive one. Each year, there are hundreds of people in our community alone who find themselves in psychiatric hospitals during the winter solstice.

The project relies on each OWL to make a small batch of cards for the project. A little goes a long way, if we come together to help. We will gather cards for our friends until our December 18th deadline. We know these cards mean a lot, both symbolically and in the hearts of those who accept and receive them. If you are able, please be an owl this year as we work hard for another successful solstice wherein we inundate our local psych hospitals with love for those who are inside them!

MITA’s co-founders want to invite you to be part of our project and to consider holding the project in your area!

Our flyer for this year is here– please feel free to print and use it!

Reminders:

If you want to get started and you’re part of a community organization, school, or church: tell your community about the project and consider planing a card-making event with them so generate cards for our neighbors at the psych centers during the solstice season.

If you want to be part of the project in a more solitary way — wonderful; you can make cards on your own or with other and we can arrange a pick up or a delivery method with you, or, if you are not local, you can send them to us via snail mail.

About our Local Card-making Meeting:

When we meet at Spot, we will TRY to sit together or near each other, depending on table availability, but it’s also perfectly awesome to come and sit on your own or with a friend and to use the supplies we have for everyone.

Do you have card-making supplies (cards, paper, markers, coloring pencils, etc) you can contribute or use?! Awesome, we appreciate it all– all that you bring to the meeting or all you make on your own.

We love making cards together at the meeting each year, but It’s also totally OKAY and NEEDED for folx to participate separately and get the cards to us for our delivery over the solstice.

Non-local folks:: there are ways for you to be part of the December Letters Project:

– if you want to LEAD this project in your area, we can support you and can walk you through the steps involved; just reach out to us at madwomenofwny@gmail.com

OR

– you can have a card-making gathering of your own or just make cards yourself and send them to us, and we will make them part of our solstice deliveries to our local psychiatric institutions.