June 27, 2007
The Phoneless can still get the Message
St. Petersburg Times
By Rita Farlow
Barbara Graham knows how it feels to be disconnected. After fleeing an abusive marriage and heading to a domestic violence shelter, Graham had no way of contacting loved ones to let them know she was safe. "I had nothing. I left with just me and my baby, and it's very difficult to get any kind of services when you don't have a phone number", Graham said.
She turned to Community Voice Mail Pinellas, a service of 211 Tampa Bay Cares that provides voice mail boxes to people who can't afford a phone. Now she serves people with similar needs, as a system administrator for the program.
The idea emerged in the early 1990s in Seattle. It has since expanded to serve more than 41, 000 people in 39 metropolitan areas that include 420 cities. The Pinellas community voice mail program, or CVM, began in 1998. This is the only area in Florida that has one.
The purpose of the service is to help people maintain a sense of normalcy, said Jennifer Brandon of the national office.
"When people are in crisis or transition, there's usually a lot of things going on. Things start to unravel quickly, so by providing this basic, simple service, you're trying to keep people connected, keep them in the circle, help them regain their stability more quickly," she said.
It's nearly impossible to stay in touch with potential employers or landlords without a phone, Brandon said. And social service agencies are at a loss to help when they can't reach their clients. "It's helping the individual, but it's also very intentionally designed to help social service and government agencies," she said.
About 80 percent of CVM users in Pinellas are from St. Petersburg, said Graham. Many clients are homeless, but they come from all walks of life: elderly men and women living on fixed incomes, low-income families with children, people fleeing abusive relationships.
"We have such a large demographic of people who can't afford a phone, so this gives them a telephone number to put on a job application or to receive social services, " Graham said.
Blocks of voice mailbox numbers are given out to various social service agencies to be distributed to clients. Once a week, people can also sign up at Daystar Life Center in St. Petersburg.
The voice mail boxes were donated by FDN Communications, a Maitland company. But there are a limited number. Out of 1, 700 numbers, fewer than 300 remain to assign to agencies. "But some agencies may still have 20 boxes available," Graham said.
The voice mail system can also be used in emergencies. When emergency management officials declare a state of emergency or call for evacuations because of an impending hurricane, CVM is able to broadcast messages to clients to direct them to shelters. "The homeless population is the last to know about weather updates, " Graham said.
Clients can access their messages by dialing directly from any phone. They can also access it for free by calling 211 or a toll-free number to be connected.
The program has proved successful, Graham said, and she counts herself as proof of that. But with the possibility of budget cuts looming for St. Petersburg, local CVM officials are concerned about the future of the program.