During her senior year at American Fork High School, she joined a pen pal project through which volunteers would write to prison inmates across the country.

Carnesecca was paired with a man named Franklin, serving time at the Pennsylvania Correctional Facility. Initially, she was hesitant about befriending a man she didn’t know, who was thousands of miles away. “It was very intimidating and a little bit scary because I didn’t know who my pen pal was. I didn’t know a lot about him or really what I was getting myself into,” she said.

However, as time went on, the two began to learn more about one another, and she looked forward to their weekly exchanging of letters.

“Through letters, we discovered we had so much in common and that we really just enjoyed a lot of the same things,” Carnesecca told the Daily Herald. “We talked about our family, we talked about our friends, different hobbies we enjoyed, our childhoods, all sorts of things.”

Courtesy Brynn Carnesecca

The experience of building an unlikely friendship taught her to look at Franklin not just as someone spending time behind bars but as a human being. It also gave her perspective on the justice system throughout the United States.

Now a high school graduate, return missionary and recently crowned Miss American Fork, Carnesecca’s hope is to extend similar experiences to interested volunteers in Utah and beyond.

Compassion Prison Project, the program Carnesecca volunteered with in high school to serve as a pen pal, is a nonprofit based in California. She looked at ways to bring the program to Utah, but the organization was not interested in expanding to other states, according to Carnesecca.

As part of her Community Service Project as Miss American Fork, Carnesecca decided to work with the Utah Department of Corrections to form her own organization, Envelopes of Hope. specifically designed to match volunteer pen pals with Utah inmates.

The recently launched program already has received a batch of letters from inmates, and Carnesecca is looking to drum up more people to volunteer.

“We’re anticipating thousands of inmates to be writing us letters in these next coming weeks. And to be frank with you, we don’t have enough volunteers to staff this whole program,” Carnesecca said. “And we’re wanting to make sure that every interested inmate can have a pen pal.”

Utah currently has just over 6,000 inmates. While there is no guarantee how many would be interested in matching with a pen pal, Carnesecca wants to make sure Envelopes of Hope has enough hands writing letters.

There are a few requirements: Volunteers need to be at least 18 and willing to commit their time to writing letters to inmates, though there is no set rule on how many letters volunteers must write or how frequently.

“However, we do ask that you set up expectations beforehand with your pen pal. Because while they are in the prison system, they can often be very isolating, and these relationships that they’re going to be developing through this program may be some of the strongest ones that they have at the moment,” Carnesecca stated.

Because safety is a must between pen pals and incarcerated people, volunteers are required to take a 20-minute training course outlining the do’s and don’ts of the program and what to do if they begin to feel uncomfortable corresponding with an inmate.

Through an intake form, volunteers can specify which gender of inmate they prefer to match with, if they want to use an alias or a provided P.O. Box, among other accommodations for the sake of safety.

From there, volunteers are matched with an inmate based on the criteria they’ve set. Once a match is formed, the organization sends volunteers their new pen pal’s name and address to begin writing.

Carnesecca says while she believes every action comes with a unique set of reactions and consequences, she also believes that in a time, where inmates are feeling isolated from society and trying to change their lives in some cases, this program can serve as a beam of hope.

“I know a lot of people may have connections to people in the prison, and that might be a sensitive subject. I understand that; I’ve had some personal experiences with that as well. But I think that if we all rally together to provide just a fragment of hope, a little bit of kindness in this dark time, we can really make a difference for the inmates in the state of Utah,” she said.

To learn more or to volunteer, visit envelopesofhopeuta.wixsite.com/hope.