Community Technology Institute (Community Voice Mail)
Patricia Barry, Executive Director
PO Box 61385
2901 Third Ave., Suite 500
Seattle, Wash. 98121
(206) 441-7872

This actively replicating, national model program got its start, as so many of the most creative programs do, at the grassroots level.

In 1990, two staff members of The Worker Center, a community economic-development group in Seattle that had sprung up to aid "displaced" workers after huge layoffs at Lockheed Corp., were thinking of ways to broaden the organization's impact by developing new programs that would win it respect without diminishing its commitment to jobs and social justice.

Then, recalls Pat Barry, she and co-worker Rich Feldman literally said "Aha!" when a homeless man came into their office. They had been trying to find this individual for several days to tell him about a job prospect, but were stymied because he had no forwarding address and no telephone.

Feldman had recently used a then-innovative voice-mail message system in an environmental campaign. Why couldn't something similar be brought to bear for homeless people, who could call in from any telephone to check for messages, even if they didn't have their own phone or a home to put it in? The idea made intuitive sense, although as Barry said, "just because something has oodles of common sense and is cost-efficient doesn't automatically make it happen." But this idea was too good to let go, and with a little creative grantsmanship -- including a partnership with Seattle's Centro de la Raza program to ensure ethnic diversity, the organization won a $23,000 community-development block grant from the state Department of Community Development to set up Community Voice Mail (CVM).

The program went into operation early in 1992, using a commercial voice-mail vendor that provided 50 voice-mail boxes at $10.50 per month per box. The voice-mail boxes were assigned to "phoneless" (usually homeless) people through six local social-service agencies, who were given a telephone number to put on job applications, and a "secret code" that could be used to check their voice mail from any telephone.

Significantly, the mailboxes were not simply handed out to street homeless people. To qualify, an individual had to work with a caseworker in an agency and develop a holistic plan to rebuild a stable life, including a search for employment and other needs that would require a phone number and access to voice mail. Recipients would be given access to voice mail for a specific period, and would sign an agreement outlining their purposes for the phone. (Personal phone calls were permitted, but could not be the primary purpose for the privilege.)

At the same time, Barry emphasizes, it's a "one piece of paper program," flexible, simple and not overly rules-bound, "designed for the person who has other work to do." After receiving basic instruction and a wallet-size card outlining the process, recipients have something that's commonplace to most of us but a rare and important thing for a homeless individual: A personal telephone number and a way to receive messages through it.

The idea quickly took off. Statistics indicated that workers with voice mail found work within four to eight weeks, in contrast with an average of three to six months for those without phones. CVM got media attention, and additional funding followed, from the city, from another voice-mail vendor, and from Boeing. Before long, CVM boasted a system of 230 mailboxes shared by 22 agencies, and improving technology reduced the cost of operation from more than $10 to less than $3 per box per month. Although growing pains caused a few problems, including at least one case of apparent illegal activity on the line (the abuser's code was unceremoniously taken away), and a somewhat larger number of difficulties with people who simply had a hard time learning to use the system, the program was an instant success by any standard. Community Technology Institute (Community VOice Mail) (continued)

National publicity soon followed, including a story on NBC Today in the summer of 1992, yielding more than 600 requests for information from all over the nation. By 1993, the system was serving more than 500 people, and records indicated that 85 percent of participants achieved some to all of their goals, including finding jobs, housing and health care.The Ford Foundation and Harvard University chose CVM as one of its $100,000 Innovations in State and Local Government Awards winners for 1993, and Barry began working actively to replicate the program in other cities. By the summer of 1993, CVM had assisted replication in Portland and Salem, Oregon; San Jose, Calif., and Waltham, Mass. In September of that year, Barry left CVM to found a national nonprofit clearinghouse -- Community Technology Institute -- using the Innovations award money to foster the replication of voice mail and "other innovative technologies in social service delivery."

Reaching out aggressively to other communities -- a map of the nation on Barry's wall sprouts with colored pins in dozens of major cities from Los Angeles to New York (where CTI partners with the Coalition for the Homeless) and beyond -- she encourages existing social-service providers to go through a simple, standard process of gathering in coalition, agreeing on the need and the intent, and then coming up with a specific plan of operation, on which she will eagerly assist. She estimates that a typical operation will cost from $40,000 to $60,000 to set up, depending on the generosity of local voice-mail vendors, and anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $1,000 or so per month for telephone bills and maintenance.

"Imagine looking for work or an apartment without a phone," observes CTI's brochure. "Homeless men and women, job seekers and others who exist outside normal telephone links routinely miss chances to find housing, services and self-sustaining work because they cannot be reached when opportunity calls. . . . CVM is a groundbreaking transfer of technology to persons out of touch and out of the economic mainstream. . . . CVM is a tool that helps people conduct their business with dignity, drive and motivation."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

Send him E-mail.

Back to the @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG Home Page