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Handspring™ Foundation Awards New Rounds Of Cash And Product Grants To Nonprofit Organizations

Nonprofit groups using Visors™ in unique ways to accomplish charitable initiatives

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (December 17, 2001) - Handspring™, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAND), a leading innovator in handheld computers and personal communicators, today announced that the Handspring Foundation, a fund supporting organizations and programs dedicated to creating positive change in their communities, has awarded its second and third rounds of cash and product grants to 11 nonprofit organizations. To date, the Handspring Foundation and Handspring, Inc. have donated a total of 1,573 products and $162,000 to nonprofit groups and relief efforts worldwide.

"The mission of the Handspring Foundation is to improve communities, and with each round of grants, our cash and product donations are addressing a variety of needs, from teaching life skills to runaway teens in New York City, to providing medical teams who perform surgeries in remote locations with tools to track patient information, to saving the Sumatran Rhinoceros in Borneo," said Gisela Bushey, worldwide manager of the Handspring Foundation. "We're delighted to not only support these organizations financially, but also to supply Visors™ and other products that will help nonprofit organizations achieve their goals."

Cash Grants
The Handspring Foundation awarded the following cash grants during its August and December 2001 grant cycles:

  • Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M. - $10,000 to fund supplies of food and backpacks to be distributed to children through the schools as part of a program called "Food for Kids."
  • SOS Children's Village of Florida, Coconut Creek, Fla. - $5,000 to support classroom instruction, individual counseling and independent living skills instruction for foster youth.
  • Earthen Vessels, Cambridge, Mass. - $5,000 for its tutoring program that matches high-risk youth with Harvard undergraduates in a one-to-one mentoring relationship for a period of up to four years.
  • Children Have Rights in Society (CHRIS) Homes, Atlanta, Ga. - $7,500 for basic needs and enrichment opportunities for the children at this family centered multi-service agency. The agency provides therapeutic treatment services to abused and neglected children and their families.
  • Home of the Innocents, Louisville, Ky. - $7,500 to help create an Assistive Technology Library with devices that enable profoundly disabled children to communicate, possibly for the first time in their lives. The facility provides care for 46 medically fragile, technology dependent, severely disabled, and terminally ill children.
  • Safe Space, New York, N.Y. - $5,000 for Safe Space's Lifeskills Program that provides runaway and homeless youth with direct services and skills to become healthy and self-sufficient adults. The grant will support case management, literacy, GED preparation, employment training and placement, peer outreach, and education to high-risk youth with histories of abuse and neglect.
Product Donations
The Handspring Foundation awarded product grants to the following nonprofit organizations:
  • Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Homeless Student Services, Fla. - 30 Visor Deluxe handhelds for Project Start-Up and an after-school tutorial program at homeless shelters and schools. The project brings technology to economically deprived students, as well as training, software, technical support and assessment.
  • M.I.T. Medical Laboratory and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass. - 45 Visor Platinums to support DiaBetNet, a project of M.I.T.'s Human Design Group. The mission of the group is to understand how real-time feedback of various physiological parameters can be used to give children with Type 1 Diabetes greater control over the illness. DiaBetNet developed a game for diabetic children to measure their glucose levels using Visor.
  • SOS Rhino of Sabah, Borneo - 25 Visor Deluxe handhelds to support the conservation, awareness, tracking and protection of the Sumatran Rhinoceros, of which there are only 300 left in the wild and three in the United States in captivity. It is the only organization in Borneo that is trying to locate and protect this last population of rhinos. SOS Rhino is using the Visors to track the Sumatran Rhinoceros.
  • Interplast, Mountain View, Calif. - 18 Visor Deluxes, Backup Modules and eyemodule2 digital cameras for medical teams traveling to remote locations around the world to perform reconstructive facial surgeries for children. The products will allow the teams to develop a handheld medical charting system, photograph patients for medical records, conduct real-time data collection, and share research and patient information for follow-up care.
  • EcoAndina, Cali, Colombia - 20 Visor Deluxes to support the conservation of endangered species, biodiversity, and natural resource management of the Central Andean Forest in Colombia. The handhelds will equip 20 field biologists to perform such tasks as data collection, species registration, population surveys, research the forest's ecology, measure results of biodiversity projects, among many others.

Additional Handspring Charitable Initiatives
After the September 11th disaster, Handspring donated 560 Visor Deluxe handhelds and 500 VisorPhones™ to the American Red Cross and to the Pentagon. The American Red Cross is using the products to coordinate disaster relief efforts, document information about victim families, and share information with law enforcement officers and firefighters. The products donated to the Pentagon replaced handheld computers lost in the disaster. Handspring donated 300 Visor Edge handhelds to eBay's Auction for America. The company also raised $46,000 from employees and an additional $10,000 from the Handspring Foundation for the September 11th Disaster Relief Fund for victim families, police and fire personnel and their families. Earlier this year, Handspring raised $21,000 for the India Earthquake Relief Fund to benefit the International Red Cross.

Handspring donated an additional 39 Visor Deluxe handhelds to 22 nonprofit organizations through its Employee Product Donation Program. In lieu of a holiday party this year, Handspring supported the San Jose Children's Shelter, a nonprofit organization located in San Jose, Calif. The shelter houses approximately 150 children ranging in age from infants up to 18 years of age that have suffered from physical or sexual abuse and neglect and are awaiting adoption or placement in foster homes. Handspring donated gifts for every child, all six shelter cottages and for their on-site school. Employees spent an afternoon with the children at the shelter decorating ornaments, cookies and the children's cottages. Handspring also brought snow and a petting zoo to the shelter for the children to enjoy.

More information about the Handspring Foundation can be found at http://www.handspring.com/company/foundation/. The deadline for the next round of grants is February 1, 2002.

About Handspring
Handspring is a leading innovator in personal communications and handheld computing. The company develops, manufactures and markets the Treo™ family of communicators, the Visor family of expandable handheld computers, and client and server software for fast web access from handheld devices and mobile phones. Founded in 1998, the company established itself as an industry leader with its Springboard™ platform, which provides a simple and easy method for hardware and software expansion. Today Handspring sells its Visor line of handheld computers and Springboard expansion modules and accessories at www.handspring.com and through select Internet and retail partners in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Middle East.

Handspring, Treo, the Handspring logo, Visor and Springboard are trademarks of Handspring, Inc. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.



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