July 11, 2006
CVM Awarded 2-Year Communities Connect Project Grant
The Center to Bridge the Digital Divide
Community Voice Mail is happy to announce that we’ve been awarded a 2-year Communities Connect project grant from The Center to Bridge the Digital Divide, based at Washington State University in Spokane. With the project grant we’ll formalize a partnership with Washington Information Network 2-1-1, with hopes that our efforts will lead the way to greater collaboration on a national scale.
Our proposal to the CBDD stated the following: “This formalized partnership will make WA State the first in the country to link two critical community services via technologic and strategic alliance, achieving the following goals:
- Increase awareness of and participation in available community services by increasing CVM users’ awareness of 2-1-1 as an easy, free, resource
- Increase awareness of and participation in CVM services by increasing 2-1-1 callers’ awareness of CVM as a free, temporary message number for phoneless people;
- Improve CVM services for end users by providing free message retrieval via telecommunications linkage with 2-1-1;
- Integrate CVM and 2-1-1 disaster relief into the WA State Emergency Response Plan, including provision of temporary message numbers (CVM) by 2-1-1 operators for persons displaced in the event of disaster;
- Evaluate basic telecommunications needs and practices of homeless and low-income Washingtonians to inform future public policy and program planning decisions.”
We’re grateful to The Center to Bridge the Digital Divide and to WIN-211 for their partnership in this endeavor.