Google offers personal phone numbers for poor

? Some poor, homeless or veterans in Kansas are getting help in their effort to find new jobs.

Google has provided a Topeka-based nonprofit agency with more than 900 telephone numbers to be distributed across the state. The numbers will have a personal voice message inbox to accept calls from potential employers.

Lazone Grays, who runs the nonprofit IBSA Inc. says the program helps people who are trying to find a job. For example, someone living at a homeless shelter wouldn’t have to give a rescue mission’s number to an employer.

Those who qualify can check their voice messages from any phone. And the inboxes won’t run out of minutes each month.

Grays tells the Topeka Capital-Journal that IBSA is the first Kansas agency involved in Google’s national Project C.A.R.E campaign.