Free as in Voice Mail

Here’s a happy story of humanitarian gadgetry. From CNN:

Free voice mail helps the homeless

“The nonprofit Community Voice Mail project provides homeless people with a way for potential employers, social service agencies and relatives to contact them. It also enables them to apply for a job without having to tell a prospective employer they are living on the streets....

Hilary Terlouw, a 45-year-old woman from Bellingham, Washington, said she was living in an abandoned trailer with no electricity when she learned about Community Voice Mail three summers ago. She lives in subsidized low-income housing and has a service dog and even a computer, she said.

‘It just saved my life,’ said Terlouw, who battles mental illnesses and physical disabilities. ‘It really did. If I didn’t have a telephone number to have doctors’ offices or clinics call me back, I don’t know what I would have done. I was truly at the end of my rope at that time.’...

Larry Sykes, Community Voice Mail director at The Stewpot, which hopes to offer more than 2,500 voice mail lines in Dallas within three years, [notes] ‘Unless they tell somebody they’re eating at The Stewpot or sleeping under a bridge, nobody knows it.’”

Sounds like a good project for Asterisk and VoIP.