Published: January 05, 2009 11:05 pm         

Verizon lends helping hand to Council on Domestic Abuse

A phone company made 2008 a little brighter for victims of domestic abuse.

Verizon Wireless donated $5,700 in wireless phones and airtime to the Council on Domestic Abuse in 2008 through its Helpline program.

Nineteen wireless phones and service were donated to the not-for-profit organization for use by domestic violence survivors. The donation of phones and service gives the survivors a total of 57,000 minutes that can be used to communicate with family, friends, domestic violence support staff and employers as they rebuild their lives.

Verizon gets used phones from the public and sends them off monthly for eventual use by CODA, said Alan Sorokin, manager at the Verizon kiosk in Honey Creek Mall.

People with phones to donate can drop them off there or any other Verizon Wireless store in the nation, including the one at 3373 S. U.S. Highway 41.

Since 2001, HopeLine’s national phone recycling and reuse program has collected more than 5.3 million wireless phones and awarded more than $5.6 million in cash grants to domestic violence agencies and organizations throughout the country. In 2008, the company donated more than 80,000 wireless phones with 240 million minutes of airtime to survivors and domestic violence organizations across the nation.

During the past four years, Hoosiers have turned in 90,000 phones to Verizon Wireless’ HopeLine program. Verizon Wireless encourages everyone who plans to give a phone to HopeLine to make sure service on that device is discontinued and to erase any personal data on the phone.

Phones given to the HopeLine program are refurbished and resold for reuse, or disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.

“A lot of us do not have phones and can’t afford to buy one so this is a real big help to us,” said a local CODA client who asked not to be named.

For more information on Verizon Wireless’ HopeLine program, visit www.verizonwireless.com/hopeline.