New Blog: Seattle Community Voice Mail

Seattle CVM has a blog! Seattle is where Community Voice Mail was first offered, and the program is now hosted by Solid Ground. Lambert and Maureen manage the CVM program there, and we look forward to lots of information for clients and their agencies. This is the 15th CVM program to publish a blog.

New CVM Blogs: Arizona, Twin Cities and Vancouver (WA)

Three more CVM programs have started blogs, to provide information to clients who use Community Voice Mail, the agencies they're working with, and the community in which they all live. Here's a rundown of the new sites:

• Arizona Community Voice Mail blog: The Arizona CVM program is hosted by Community Information & Referral in Phoenix, and the blog is maintained by Juan Mendez, the new CVM Manager there. Arizona CVM serves more than 1,500 clients each year.
  
• Twin Cities Community Voice Mail blog: The Twin Cities CVM program offers voice mail services statewide, and is the largest program in the country, providing voice mail boxes and broadcast messaging to nearly 5,000 clients.
  
• Vancouver (WA) Community Voice Mail blog: CVM Vancouver is hosted by the Council for the Homeless in Vancouver, Washington. CVM Vancouver serves more than 800 clients each year.

Why does CVM blog? Well, we've found that nationally, 59% of our clients have an email address, and look for information (and entertainment) on the web like everyone else. Case managers and others serving people in poverty also use the blogs to provide information to their own clients, especially those who don't have a CVM number. Finally, the material posted on CVM blogs generally mirrors the information our clients receive via broadcast voice messages, so the blog becomes a permanent repository of that information in case our clients lose the voice mail ("Now where did I write that down?").

Happy reading!