This app lets kids send messages to their parents where?

Antoine Patton, motivated by his own personal experience, has built an app that makes it easy for prison inmates to keep in touch with their kids. Called Photo Patch, the app lets kids upload photos and write letters for an incarcerated parent. An algorithm scans the uploaded content for anything that might raise red flags by a prison’s mail screening system, like profanity or gang symbols. Then the organization behind the app, Photo Patch Foundation, prints and mails the content in prison-appropriate packaging. 

Patton’s journey to creating Photo Patch began while he was serving a seven-year sentence in New York. He had a hard time keeping in contact with his young daughter Jay Jay — in 2011, the Christmas card she sent him didn’t arrive until the day before Valentine’s Day. So, while still behind bars, he set out to learn to code. 

Patton then put what he learned to work and built Photo Patch, with the help of his cousin Greg Bryant, now the company’s COO. They filed for nonprofit status after Patton was released, and today their app has about 25,000 users. After he was reunited with Jay Jay, Patton taught her what he had learned, and she put it to good use, designing and maintaining the Photo Patch mobile app. She even holds the title of junior director of Photo Patch. 

Patton also wanted to teach others what he had learned, a promise he had made to a mentor in prison who helped him learn to code. So he created Unlock Academy, a website that teaches people the basics of computers and coding as well as how to interwire and blend into a startup culture. The academy even helps students find internships.

Photo Patch is now working on the second iteration of the mobile app, available for free on both iOS and Android.