Project Homeless Connect, in conjunction with the communications company GrandCentral, has launched a program that provides phone numbers and voicemail for homeless people in the San Francisco area.
From the San Francisco Chronicle (April 14, 2006):
Under a program being introduced this month called Project CARE (Communications and Respect for Everybody), homeless and other low-income people are able to sign up for individual telephone numbers where they can leave and receive voice mail messages.
That’s a bigger deal than it might seem on the surface—the inability to get messages, social workers have long said, is a crippling barrier for street people trying to schedule appointments for job interviews, counseling or any of the other things they need to get their lives back on track.
The article mentions a separate project involving library resources: “Project Re-Entry, an online training program for job and education skills that homeless people can access for free on library computer systems.”
For more info, visit www.projecthomelessconnect.com.