Keystone Scholarship Fund

Hi, everyone. I have been away for quite a while. My amazing and wonderful mom died last August, and I am still hurting so much inside. My dad is dying, and I haven't been able to talk to him in almost a month.

Last month I was given a choice: lose my job in prison or carry 300 pound sheets of metal up a flight of stairs to the trash. So I did the job because I need money to survive, just like everyone else in the world. Well, my left bicep's muscle was torn off the bone. I was sent out for surgery on May 8th to have it reattached and now I am one-handed. I don't know how well my left arm is healing. Two and a half weeks after surgery and it still hurts so much to move. This was my first surgery, and I hope I never have to experience it again.

I am unable to get in touch with my dad. He is doing his bucket list. His cancer is advancing and he will not live to see the end of summer. I have no family anymore, just my daughter who has her own problems.

But what I want to talk about is the Keystone Scholarship Program.

We lifers here have created a scholarship program in which a child who has been affected by crime would be chosen and our lifers organization will help pay for their college education. We have the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, their Victims Services Unit Director Movita Harrell, and we are also involving more people in the outside who will help selected qualified children from Philadelphia who we will help sponsor. We currently have one foundation who is willing to match our donation, dollar for dollar, so we are up to $8,000. Just a drop in the bucket for a kid who has no money to pay for college.

So what I am asking the readers is, does anyone know who we can reach out to in order to ask for help? We are looking for foundations or organizations who would be willing to help us support this life-changing project.

I have no Internet access but, if anyone has any ideas, they can contact me a few ways. You can send me the info on this site. You can sign up to email me at connectnetwork.com, search PA Doc, SCI Dallas, Robert Pezzeca, #DX1148. Or you can send me a letter, but all mail must have a return name and address on it. Doesn't have to be real; if you don't want me to have your info, you can use a fake one. No colored envelopes, stickers, perfume, lipstick, or tape on mail or it will not be delivered.

We need to help some of these kids so that they don't throw their lives away and make horrible choices like we did. Everyone on the executive board asks for your help.

We are a certified non-profit 501c3 charity. I have our EIN# as well. We run a mentoring program in here, and we are hoping to expand it to the outside where we can help some kids from following in our footsteps.

To raise money in here, we hold candy sales, donut sales, juice sales. All the profits go in a bank account. We file the paperwork asking the prison to allow us to donate a specific amount of profits to certain charities and why we want to do this. Inmate organizations in PA donate over a quarter million dollars to charities each year. That's a lot of money from men and women who make anywhere from 19 cents-42 cents per hour.

Please get back to me.

Thank you, ciao.