Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Stories from Clients (NEED Magazine)

NEED Magazine just published a nice piece featuring the "stories" of a few Seattle Community Voice Mail clients, with accompanying photos. If you watched the video we recently published with the voices of CVM clients talking about the best voice message they've ever received, you'll recognize some of the photos, and you can now learn more about their experiences. Of course, they all use Community Voice Mail, and it's been instrumental in improving their situation, but the bigger story is about their sheer determination to overcome the huge obstacles before them. Inspiring stuff.

Monday, August 17, 2009

New CVM Blog: Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Community Voice Mail, which is hosted by Travelers Aid of Pittsburgh, has just launched a blog to keep CVM clients, agencies and others in the area informed about jobs, events and other local resources. The Pittsburgh program launched earlier this year, and is already serving hundreds of clients. This is the 10th CVM blog!

Friday, August 14, 2009

"Poverty in Chicago" Documentary

There's a good (and of course, achingly sad) documentary now online about the homeless and others living in poverty in Chicago. It's called "Poverty in Chicago", and it was written and directed by Brian Schodorf. You can watch it below, and read more about it on the web site for the film. (Thanks to the NAEH blog for pointing me to this).

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Your Best Voice Mail Message Ever

We send a lot of voice messages to our clients, about jobs, events, health information, local resources, etc. We frequently ask them for information about how they use their Community Voice Mail box, or how else we can help. Recently, we asked our clients in Houston a different kind of question:

"What's the best voice mail message you've ever received?"

Within a week, we received more than 100 amazing and moving messages, and you can listen to a selection of them below. Jobs, family, love, connection...there's a lot of life that gets squeezed through the phone lines. We hope you find this as inspiring as we do. Enjoy!



Our profound thanks to the CVM clients in Houston who left us messages, and to the Seattle CVM clients who agreed to be photographed. Thanks also to volunteer photographer Rajiv Kapoor, who along with Daniel from the CVM National Office spent a lot of time with our clients to capture these images.