Community Voicemail
The system provides the Big Issue’s vendors with a fixed contact number, which they use when applying for housing, employment, or other social services.
Project Overview
The homeless and other marginalised groups of society without access to a phone number and associated voicemail system often face an inability to maintain communication connections with the public. The Community Voicemail project attempted to address this issue with the intention of implementing a voicemail system, as part of the communications protocol between the publishers of the Big Issue magazine and its vendors. Each vendor would receive an individual phone number, which was used as a contact point from both the Big Issue and other third party organisations.
The goals of the project were to improve the business efficiency at the Big Issue by allowing information to be disseminated to vendors more efficiently, and to provide the Big Issue’s vendors with a fixed contact number, which could then be used for housing and employment applications.