Verizon Wireless Aids UNC Chapel Hill Students In Creative Approach To Preventing Sexual Assault On College Campuses

RALEIGH, NC — Today Verizon Wireless announced its support of Project Dinah, a student organization of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, with a grant to the organization for its fall semester plans for sexual assualt awareness throughout the state of North Carolina. Nearly one in four women experience sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime (1), and Project Dinah aims to educate students about interpersonal violence and raise awareness for the issue in the community.

During the 2010 school year, Project Dinah produced a photography exhibit entitled “Survivor Stories: These Are Our Voices,” featuring students, faculty and staff who volunteered to pose for the anonymous photos and share their stories of surviving sexual assault. This year, Project Dinah plans to take the awareness campaign on the road to other North Carolina colleges and universities.

“Our goal is to maximize the awareness potential of the incredible stories these brave women shared by reaching our peers at other North Carolina schools,” said Bethany Hargis, senior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and co-chair of Project Dinah. “This grant from Verizon will draw attention to the importance of preventing interpersonal violence and enable the voices of survivors to reach students across the state.”

“Verizon has a long-standing commitment to fight interpersonal violence through our HopeLine program, whether it be sexual assault, spousal abuse or other forms of domestic violence,” said Jerry Fountain, Verizon Wireless president for the Carolinas and Tennessee. “We were compelled by the passion of the students involved in Project Dinah to aid them in taking this message to other college students around the state.”

The exhibit is currently being prepared for the fall tour; dates and locations for viewing the exhibit will be announced later this year. For more information on “Survivor Stories: These Are Our Voices,” please contact Bethany Hargis at bethanyhargis@gmail.com.

(1) The World Health Report Fact Sheet on Sexual Violence, 2002.

About HopeLine from Verizon Wireless
Exclusive to Verizon, HopeLine puts wireless technology and the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless network to work in communities by turning no-longer-used wireless phones into support for victims of domestic violence and helps protect the environment by disposing of wireless phones in an environmentally sound way. Since HopeLine from Verizon’s national cell phone recycling and re-use program was launched in 2001, Verizon Wireless has collected more than 8 million phones, awarded more than $10 million in cash grants to domestic violence agencies, and distributed more than 106,000 phones with more than 319 million minutes of free wireless service to be used by victims of domestic violence. To learn more, please visit www.verizon.com/about/responsibility/domestic-violence-prevention.

About Project Dinah
Project Dinah is a student organization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that is devoted to safety and empowerment. Its mission is to end all sexual and interpersonal violence on campus and in the community. The ultimate vision of Project Dinah is a world where every relationship is free of fear and force. To promote this goal, the organization sponsors numerous education and advocacy programs on campus and in conjunction with local domestic and sexual violence agencies. Project Dinah also maintains a blog for students to anonymously share their stories of surviving sexual assault and deal with the emotional repercussions. To learn more, please visit http://projectdinah.webs.com/.

About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s fastest, most advanced 4G network and largest, most reliable 3G network. The company serves 106.3 million total wireless connections, including 89.7 million retail customers. Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with 83,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ) and Vodafone (LSE, NASDAQ: VOD). For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.

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