Supporting GrandCentral's Project CARE

Posted by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, Product Managers

For homeless people and others in need, not having a stable phone number can be crippling: you need one to follow up on medical appointments, keep in touch with friends and loved ones, and hear back from prospective employers.

When we acquired GrandCentral Communications last month, we were pleased to embrace their Project CARE initiative, which provides a permanent local phone number and unlimited voicemail service to people who need a way to stay connected.

GrandCentral has been operating Project CARE ("Communications and Respect for Everybody") since April 2006, and with the help of more than 20 community outreach partners has provided more than 5,000 phone numbers and served close to 100,000 voicemail messages to homeless and needy people in the Bay Area. Someone calling a number from Project CARE will have the same experience as someone calling a standard phone number, and voicemail messages can be stored as long as they're needed.

A big part of Project CARE has been GrandCentral's participation in San Francisco's Project Homeless Connect events. Every other month, these gatherings bring service providers like GrandCentral together with volunteers at an all-day fair to provide services to the homeless. In fact, there's an event today, starting at 8:30 AM (PDT) at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. If you're in San Francisco, please stop by our booth or even volunteer.