Bell Atlantic Foundation Awards Grants to Three Catholic Schools in West Virginia

Bell Atlantic Foundation Awards Grants
to Three Catholic Schools in West Virginia

Schools in Huntington, Morgantown, Moundsville Get Funds

10 de noviembre de 1998

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Teachers at three Catholic schools in West
Virginia will receive a total of nearly $5,300 from Bell Atlantic's WORLD
SCHOOL® Grant Program to help them use the global resources of the
Internet for education.

Bell Atlantic - West Virginia has awarded over $200,000 in WORLD
SCHOOL grants since the program began in 1995. Since the first of the
year, the Bell Atlantic Foundation has distributed over $26,000 to West
Virginia schools.

The latest grant winners are: Our Lady of Fatima School in Huntington
(applied for by faculty member Sheila Leach); St. Francis Central
Catholic School in Morgantown (Beth Baril, development director); and
St. Francis Xavier School (Cathy Frame, faculty member).

"We're pleased that we can extend our successful WORLD SCHOOL
program to parochial and private schools in the state. These teachers
should be applauded for their creativity in harnessing the Internet for
educational enrichment," said Dennis Bone, president and CEO of Bell
Atlantic - West Virginia.

Our Lady of Fatima School will receive $2,240 to purchase equipment that
will allow small groups of students to study ancient Rome using the
Internet. The students will research the area's geography and select a
settlement site. Each group member will assume the role of farmer,
shepherd, merchant, soldier, builder or leader in determining the best site
available. Students will also communicate with the Latin I class at
Huntington High School and a class at Marymount International School in
Rome.

St. Francis Central Catholic School will receive $1,550 to allow its
students to use the Internet to study animals native to West Virginia. The
students will write stories from a particular animal's point of view. These
stories will be posted on the school's World Wide Web site. Students at
Wright Denny School in Charles Town, W.Va., will review the stories as
they are posted on the Internet and send e-mail to the authors with
questions and comments.

St. Francis Xavier School will receive a $1,500 grant, which will allow
students to design a newspaper for the school's Web site. The students are
presently helping to create that Web site.

Educators can learn more about these and other projects by accessing the
WORLD SCHOOL Web site at http://www.BellAtlantic.com/wschool.

The WORLD SCHOOL Grant Program complements Bell Atlantic's
WORLD SCHOOL project, through which the company is offering direct,
high-speed digital Internet access to over 800 K-12 schools in West
Virginia. Teachers in all schools served by Bell Atlantic - West Virginia are
eligible to submit applications for the grant program.

The company awards individual WORLD SCHOOL grants of up to
$4,000. A panel of education leaders and Bell Atlantic employees judges
all grant proposals. Grant money cannot be used to purchase basic
telephone services or hardware, such as computer monitors, hard disk
drives, printers or liquid crystal display panels.

Educators can obtain applications on the WORLD SCHOOL grants
program by calling the Bell Atlantic - West Virginia public relations office
at 1-800-642-8206.

The Bell Atlantic Foundation supports a variety of projects domestically
and internationally, with an emphasis on new technology applications in
education, health and human services, the arts and humanities, and civic
development in the communities served by Bell Atlantic. For more
information, visit www.bellatlanticfoundation.com on the Internet.

Bell Atlantic is at the forefront of the new communications and information industry. With 42 million telephone access lines and eight million wireless
customers worldwide, Bell Atlantic companies are premier providers of
advanced wireline voice and data services, market leaders in wireless
services and the world's largest publishers of directory information. Bell
Atlantic companies are also among the world's largest investors in high-
growth global communications markets, with operations and investments in
23 countries.