International Pen Friends
International Pen Friends (also: International Penfriends ) (IPF) (German: Internationale Brieffreunde ) is an international association that was founded in Ireland in 1967 and provides pen pals all over the world for a membership fee. The headquarters of the organization is now in Australia (formerly Ireland). Around 400 so-called representatives or agents work for the organization around the world and take on recruiting / looking after members in their home country (or in areas assigned by the IPF headquarters).
"The pen is mightier than the sword" - The IPF story
For a long time the Irishman Neil O'Donnell was looking for a way to practice international understanding between people of different nations before he came up with the idea of the shoebox in 1967 - at a time when writing letters was even more common than telephoning. The cardboard box served him as an address archive for letter contacts. With that the "International Pen Friends" (International Penfriends, IPF) were founded.
What began modestly, over the years developed into the largest penpals club in the world, which now has around 300,000 members in 192 countries, and in which around 5,000,000 penpals have been arranged over the years. Neil O'Donnell's idea of promoting understanding and friendship between people from different countries and cultures through international pen pals became the club's maxim. For this purpose, hobbies and other interests of the searcher are queried in questionnaires, restrictions on the contacts sought and other preferences for a potential pen pal can be specified. The ages of the members range from eight to eighty, and every social class, creed, and color is represented in IPF.
On January 12, 2001, Neil O'Donnell resigned the management of International Penfriends due to health reasons, on August 3, 2004 O'Donnell died of complications from cancer. The new head of IPF is Australian Julie Delbridge. The club has been headquartered in Australia since March 2001 (at Byron Bay / Suffolk Park, NSW, since 2004).