Verizon Wireless gave a $100,000 grant to the American Library Association (ALA) at the ALA annual conference on Sunday, July 9 at McCormick Place Convention Center. Annette Jacobs, president of the Great Lakes Area of Verizon Wireless, presented the grant to Sarah Ann Long, president of the ALA. The grant will go to ALA's Office for Literacy and Outreach to build a literary coalition website.

The ALA/Verizon Wireless Library Literary website will support improved services for adult learners and their families by making the resources of national, state and local libraries and their programs readily available. The broader distribution of these resources will assist in building new coalitions and improving existing ones.

The website will display the efforts and accomplishments of existing adult literary coalitions at the local, state and national levels. The site also features a model-building component that will enable users to select specific items from existing programs to build a literary coalition model to fit the needs of their community, county or state.

"Our goal is to become America's Literary Champion. We understand the power of cooperative effort, and that's why wherever we do business, we get involved in the community, particularly in programs that address literacy," Jacobs said. "We know that working to increase literacy among children and adults is crucial for the welfare of every single citizen in this country because, by doing so, we raise the standard of living for all of us."

About Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless communications provider in the U.S. with more than 25 million wireless voice and data customers and nearly 4 million paging customers. The new coast-to-coast wireless provider was formed by the combination of the U.S. wireless businesses of Bell Atlantic Corp. (NYSE:BEL), Vodafone AirTouch Plc (LSE:VOD; NYSE:VOD), and GTE Corp. (NYSE:GTE). The new company includes the assets of Bell Atlantic Mobile, AirTouch Cellular, GTE Wireless, PrimeCo Personal Communications and AirTouch Paging. The new company has a footprint covering nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population, 49 of the top 50 and 96 of the top 100 U.S. markets.

Verizon Wireless, headquartered in New York City and Bedminster, NJ, is 30,000 employees strong. Reporters and editors can find more information about the company in its Media Center on the Web at: http://www.verizonwireless.com/mediacenter.

About the Great Lakes Area

The Great Lakes Area of Verizon Wireless is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. The area includes the Greater Chicago market and most of Illinois; the Greater Indianapolis market and most of Indiana; the Greater St. Louis and Cape Girardeau markets of Missouri; the Greater Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison markets and other areas of Wisconsin; Detroit and the Southeast region of Michigan; and the Columbus and Cleveland markets and much of Ohio. The Great Lakes Area serves more than 5.6 million customers and has a potential customer base of 41.2 million.

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