12/02/2025
Over the past year, it has become clear that the work we do inside of prisons is often best left inside of prisons. You may have noticed we haven’t posted much this year—and that was by design.
But today, on Giving Tuesday, we’d love to share just a glimpse of what your generosity made possible in 2025.
Because of your support:
• We made four trips to Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), working across multiple units within the sprawling 28-square-mile institution. Every visit was meaningful, productive, and deeply needed.
• The Parchman Band—a revived inmate blues band—continued to grow in confidence and purpose. Watching these men rediscover identity and dignity through music has been one of the most powerful pictures of rehabilitation we’ve ever witnessed.
• Our death row songwriting class remained a safe and honest place for emotional processing, especially after two executions this year, including one of our own participants. Showing up for these men in their grief mattered more than words can capture.
• We helped facilitate donations of instruments, instructional materials, and music gear throughout the prison, expanding access to meaningful creative expression.
• We launched a new program in Parchman’s geriatric/nursing unit, a population often forgotten. Seeing music reconnect aging men—including those facing cognitive decline—to memory, emotion, and joy was one of the most humbling experiences of our year.
• At Walker State Prison in Georgia, our long-standing songwriting program continued to thrive, with participants experiencing genuine emotional breakthroughs through the power of creating a song.
• Beyond prison walls, our HopeSong program continued serving cancer patients facing terminal diagnoses—bringing presence, comfort, and connection through music when it’s needed most.
This is the work your generosity fuels.
This is the hope you help carry into places many people never see.
If Second Verses has a place in your heart, we would be honored if you’d consider supporting the work again this Giving Tuesday. But whether you give or not, please know this:
Your belief in the healing power of music has touched lives in ways you may never fully know. And for that—we are deeply, sincerely grateful.
Donate here: https://www.2ndverses.org/donate
