Cell Phones For Soldiers Keeps Families Connected

When Brittany and Robbie Berquist were just pre-teens in 2005, they read about an Army reservist who faced a $7,600 bill for making calls home from Iraq. Everyone has a right to call home, they thought, and so they founded Cell Phones for Soldiers, a nonprofit organization that recycles unwanted cell phones and purchases prepaid calling cards for soldiers. In the last 5 years, they've handed out more than 400,000 calling cards, totaling over one million dollars worth of donated mobile phones.

The Washington Post describes Mike Sellner, a volunteer firefighter and former naval officer, who remembers soldiers having to hoard and trade handfuls of quarters and dimes to call home from a foreign country.

Cell Phones for Soldiers sends 25,000 phone cards overseas every month. In addition to cell phones, they except Blackberries, chargers and batteries.

The group has received heartwarming letters from soldiers around the globe, expressing their appreciation for the calling cards and their pride in the young people who took it upon themselves to solve this problem.

Print a free shipping label from their site and mail in your old phone today.

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