Our neighborhoods are growing, expanding, and changing shape in response to the way we live. Families are spread across town, across the country, even across oceans. Some of us travel miles to work, while others go to the office without ever leaving home. And a growing number of us are as likely to run into friends on the Information Superhighway as we are on Main Street.

At NYNEX, strengthening our neighborhoods, wherever we find them and however we define them, is a big part of what we do. In some cases that means using technology to find new and better ways of bringing people together. In others it's helping an elementary school install computers and networking capability so a teacher can put the future in a child's hands.

However and wherever we do it, our aim is singularly the same: to use the power of technology to educate, to heal, to give people the tools to pursue their goals and aspirations. That's what we mean when we say we're your hometown advantage. And it's the focus of our philanthropic efforts.

In this report you'll find the basic "who-what-when-where-why" of our grants and programs. But you'll also discover lots more information as close as the nearest computer. Background on all of NYNEX's philanthropic efforts can be found on the Internet's World Wide Web. In fact, if you apply for a grant over the Internet, we guarantee that you'll get an answer in as few as two days.

NYNEX may serve customers from Boston to the Bronx, Bangor to Bangkok, but we still consider ourselves a hometown company. And making our neighborhoods better places to live and work is the driving philosophy behind everything we do.

Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO