Practice Management

A Good Reason to Buy a New Cell Phone

This is a little off the beaten path of my blog, but it’s worth mentioning. Instead of creating landfill when you buy a new toy, you can create good will for someone laying their life on the line for our country. Admit it, you’ve either bought or thought of buying a new cell phone just because a new one is cooler than the old one. More features. . . Smaller. . . Lighter. . .Prettier color –you go girl! . . . Larger display. . . Whatever the reason, the old cell phone often becomes nothing more than poisonous landfill. Now you can do something good when you get rid of it.

I’ve donated a couple old phones to a local woman’s shelter in the past. But here’s another alternative which may be equally attractive. With so many of our country’s young people deployed overseas, keeping in touch with family and friends stateside is a difficult and expensive proposition. Now there is an organization collecting cell phones to assist our enlisted men and women with their communication needs.

Cell Phones for Soldiers hopes to turn old cell phones into more than 12 million minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas in 2007. To do so, Cell Phones for Soldiers expects to collect 15,000 cell phones each month through a network of more than 3,000 collection sites across the country.

The phones are sent to ReCellular, which pays Cell Phones for Soldiers for each donated phone ? enough to provide an hour of talk time for soldiers abroad.

Cell Phones for Soldiers was founded by teenagers Robbie and Brittany Bergquist from Norwell, Mass., with $21 of their own money. Since then, the registered 501c3 non-profit organization has raised almost $1 million in donations and distributed more than 400,000 prepaid calling cards to soldiers serving overseas.

Sponsor AT&T has donated more than $500,000 worth of prepaid phone cards to Cell Phones for Soldiers and is now offering all 1,800 company-owned wireless store locations across the country as drop-off sites to help recycle used cell phones for the program, through July 2008. There are many other generous sponsors as well.

Cell Phones for Soldiers was featured on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric; highlighting a 7-year-old who’s missing his daddy and a father thousands of miles away at war. The phone call is not just a chance to catch up; its the only way to cope.

OK, so now you have a good reason to buy that new cell phone you’ve wanted, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it!

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Full post as published by Law Practice Management on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).