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Their service to our nation is immeasurable, and in return, it’s our privilege to offer support in the ways we can. This guide outlines how you can contribute to helping our veterans, whether through financial donations, volunteering your time, or other meaningful ways. Recognizing the importance of giving back to the veteran community, we encourage you to engage actively and thoughtfully in this noble cause to help our warriors have a better quality of life.

Understanding Veterans’ Needs

When veterans return to civilian life, they often bring with them a legacy of invaluable experiences but also face a series of profound challenges that extend beyond their individual lives, impacting their families and communities. These challenges are not merely transitional issues; they can have lasting effects on the mental, emotional, and financial well-being of soldiers and their loved ones.

But by understanding the depth and breadth of these issues, we can better appreciate the sacrifices they have made and understand the support they need to reintegrate successfully into civilian life.

Challenges Faced by Veterans

As we seek to extend support to those who have served our nation, it’s vital to comprehend the complexities they face upon returning to civilian life. This transition, often perceived as a return to normalcy, can be laden with unique challenges that deeply affect veterans’ lives, including:

• Difficulty relating to non-military individuals: Veterans often experience isolation due to difficulties in connecting with people who haven’t shared their military experiences.
• Building community connections: Adjusting from a structured military environment to civilian life can make it challenging for veterans to create new social networks and ties in the community.
• Workforce re-entry and preparation: The journey back into the workforce is a significant hurdle, with some veterans facing higher unemployment rates.
• Adapting to less structured civilian life: Transitioning from the structured routine of military life to a more autonomous civilian lifestyle can profoundly affect daily routines and overall well-being.
• Securing basic necessities: Many veterans face difficulties in accessing basic necessities such as food, clothing, and housing.
• Establishing essential services: Accessing the healthcare system and other vital services can be complex for veterans, especially when dealing with conditions such as PTSD and other conditions that need ongoing medical care.

Soldier receiving assistance for PTSD.

According to the National Center for PTSD, at some point in their life, 7 out of every 100 Veterans (or 7%) will have PTSD.

Importance of Supporting Veterans

The support we offer to veterans during and after their transition to civilian life is not just an act of gratitude but a necessary step in acknowledging their sacrifices and contributions. Veterans enrich our communities with their discipline, skills, and perspectives, yet they often face many challenges that can impede their reintegration and well-being. It is imperative that we, as a society, step up to provide the support they need in various aspects of their lives.

This support can take many forms, from ensuring they have access to adequate healthcare and housing to assist them in finding employment and building community connections. By addressing their specific needs, we help ease their transition and enable them to thrive in civilian life.

Donating Financially to Veterans

Providing financial support to veterans is a powerful way to make a direct impact on their lives. Monetary contributions can help address many of their needs, from healthcare and housing to education and employment support. 

Direct Monetary Donations

Direct monetary donations to veterans are crucial, as they can be used for immediate needs and essential services. By donating, you can contribute to the cost of medical care, housing, and other specialized services that are key in their transition, such as connection services.

At Cell Phones For Soldiers, we help in maintaining and expanding communication services, enabling veterans to stay connected with their families and support networks, which is vital for their emotional well-being and successful transition. If you want to help veterans stay connected, you can make your donation through this PayPal to provide immediate assistance.

Fundraising Campaigns

Creating or participating in fundraising campaigns is another impactful way to gather resources for veteran support. You can organize community events, and online fundraisers, or join existing campaigns to raise funds.

Donating to Veterans’ Organizations

Financial contributions to veterans’ organizations enable us to continue their vital work. For example, at Cell Phones for Soldiers, we provided over 400 million minutes of free talk time and have assisted more than 7,500 veterans and their families with emergency funding since we started in 2012.

Your support, whether through direct donations, participating in fundraising efforts, or supporting veterans’ organizations like ours, plays an essential role in acknowledging and aiding our nation’s heroes.

Soldier looking for job opportunities on a smartphone.

Even with unemployment rates showing a drop in 2022, there are still thousands of ex-soldiers currently unemployed, representing 2.8% of all veterans, according to the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service.

Donating Goods to Veterans

Contributing goods to veterans is more than just a charitable act; it’s a meaningful gesture that tangibly enhances the quality of their daily lives. These donations go beyond mere material assistance; they include a message of care, respect, and recognition of their service.

Every item donated, from clothing to medical equipment, plays a significant role in easing the transition of veterans to civilian life, offering comfort, and meeting essential needs. The impact of these contributions is profound, fostering a sense of community support and acknowledging the sacrifices made.

Collecting and Distributing Essential Items for Veterans

When we come together to collect and distribute essential items for veterans, we participate in a powerful act of community-building and support. Each item holds the potential to make a significant difference in a veteran’s life:

• Clothes: Providing clothing can empower veterans, especially those seeking employment or adjusting to new roles in civilian life.
• Cell phones or smartphones: By donating cell phones to Cell Phones For Soldiers, you contribute directly to their mission of connecting veterans with their loved ones and essential services. This simple act of recycling or donating a phone can significantly aid in reducing veterans’ isolation and enhancing their communication capabilities.
• Devices: Donating devices like tablets and laptops can open doors for veterans, aiding in job searches, education, or staying connected with family.
• Medical equipment: Medical equipment donations also play a crucial role in supporting veterans with health-related needs, ensuring they have access to the care they require.
• Household goods: Everyday household items can significantly ease the transition for veterans setting up new homes, providing a sense of normalcy and stability.

From Cell Phones For Soldiers, we ensure your donations of devices contribute to a larger cause, supporting communication services and emergency funding for veterans. Our efforts, including helping thousands of veterans to stay connected, prove the substantial impact your contributions can have, turning simple donations into lifelines of support.

Volunteering for Veterans

Volunteering is a deeply rewarding way to give back to those who have served our nation. By getting involved, you can make a significant impact on the lives of veterans within your community. Here are some ways you can volunteer with CPFS:

• Become a student ambassador: As a student ambassador, you can raise awareness and organize support for veterans within your school or community.
• Workplace giving: Coordinate or participate in fundraising and donation drives at your workplace to contribute to veteran support initiatives.
• Starting a drive: Lead drives to collect phones, devices, or other essential items that benefit veterans. You can register a new drop-off location and help people from your community reach their cell phone donations.
• Being a dedicated drop-off location: Offer your business or community center as a collection point for donations, facilitating easier contributions from others.

Get Involved with CPFS

Your involvement with Cell Phones For Soldiers can have a profound impact on the lives of veterans. Whether it’s through donating money and goods, offering financial support, or volunteering your time, every contribution makes a meaningful difference. By participating in these initiatives, you become a vital part of a community that honors and supports those who have selflessly served our nation.

Explore the various ways you can contribute by visiting our volunteer opportunities. Your dedication, whether it’s organizing a collection drive, becoming a student ambassador, or simply spreading the word, helps to provide crucial support to veterans, aiding in their transition and enhancing their well-being. Join us in this noble cause, and together, let’s make a lasting difference in the lives of our veterans.

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Less than 20 percent of the world’s mobile e-waste (unwanted or broken mobile devices like cell phones and tablets) gets recycled. That means not only the plastic casings for discarded devices ends up in landfills and oceans—the components, including some rare minerals that are unsafe for precious ecosystems, can also enter our environment in damaging ways. This year, please join Cell Phones For Soldiers in increasing the recycling of mobile e-waste!

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Donating or recycling consumer electronics conserves our natural resources and avoids air and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by manufacturing virgin materials.” At Cell Phones For Soldiers, we take your donated devices—whether they work or not, regardless of their age and condition—and recycle them securely. Some of the devices can be refurbished, while others are broken down for parts. Income from reselling these materials supports our mission of helping our military in a variety of important ways, including providing free talk time to American troops around the world and assisting veterans in need.

The EPA’s statistics about the benefits of recycling cell phones are staggering.

• For every 1 million phones that consumers recycle, the following valuable materials are recovered:
  • 35,000 pounds of copper
  • 772 pounds of silver
  • 75 pounds of gold
  • 33 pounds of palladium

To date, Cell Phones For Soldiers has recycled more than 20 MILLION devices! In our 17 years serving our military and veterans, we have seen incredible generosity from individual donors and organizations, like the global transport and logistics company CMA-CGM, which recently sent Cell Phones For Soldiers more than 200 devices from as far away as Guam.

We make it easy to donate your old cell phones: You can either find a local drop-off site to donate your unwanted devices or you can ship them directly to us with a convenient mailing label from our website. Visit our donation page to learn more. 

Join us in our mission to keep mobile e-waste from harming the environment while supporting America’s heroes!

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Specifically, let’s talk about what happens when you have mobile-electronic waste—old cell phones, smartphones, tablets, mp3 players, etc.—piling up in your junk drawer or attic. When you don’t use it anymore, or if it’s broken, it’s tempting to want to throw it right in the trash.  

The World Economic Forum has released dire statistics on the rising problem of e-waste around the world. The United States has managed to reduce its waste of electronics, but there’s still a lot of work to do; only about 35 percent of e-waste is recycled. Around the world, the amount of e-waste has become a crisis. “Consumers can’t resist faster products with more storage and better cameras, but constant upgrades have created a growing global waste challenge. In 2019 alone, people discarded 53 million metric tons of electronic waste.”

But how you get rid of electronic waste matters, even if it’s as small as an iPod Nano (remember those?!).

Electronic waste can be extremely harmful to the environment if it ends up in a landfill. Anyone who’s had a mobile phone for longer than a few years knows they’re not built to last a lifetime, yet our devices are made with products that are anything but disposable. Our old devices may include things like cadmium, mercury, and lead as well as lithium batteries and rare-earth minerals, plus, they’re cased in plastic—all things that can cause damage to water supplies and ecosystems.

Addressing the Growing E-Waste Challenge

The rapid replacement cycle of cell phones contributes significantly to the escalating issue of electronic waste (e-waste). With millions of phones discarded annually in the U.S. alone, the environmental impact is substantial. These unused devices, often languishing in drawers or thrown away, contribute to a mounting e-waste problem. By acknowledging this challenge and opting for recycling, we can prevent these devices from becoming environmental hazards and instead turn them into valuable resources.

The Environmental and Health Risks of E-Waste

Discarded cell phones pose not just an environmental threat but also a health risk. These devices contain hazardous materials like mercury and lead, which can leach into the soil and water systems, causing significant harm. Moreover, the accumulation of e-waste contributes to the loss of precious metals and resources. Recycling offers a sustainable solution, allowing for the recovery of these materials and reducing the need for further resource extraction, which is often environmentally damaging.

What To Do With Old Cell Phones?

Instead of letting them gather dust, consider cell phone recycling as a sustainable choice. Recycling your mobile e-waste with an organization like Cell Phones For Soldiers can keep those harmful materials out of the environment and benefit our troops soldiers and veterans at the same time. Our recycling partner recycles each device securely, identifying which components may be resold for reuse (which helps cut the demand for mining in vulnerable places), and providing revenue for us to help service members communicate with home or support veterans in need. To date, we’ve stopped more than 20 million devices from entering landfills!

Where To Recycle Cell Phones?

Cell Phones For Soldiers offers an excellent opportunity to dispose of your electronic devices responsibly:

Find a Drop-Off Location

If you prefer to drop off your old cell phones in person, visit our Drop-Off Locations page. Our interactive map will guide you to the nearest recycling point, making it easy to contribute your devices and support our troops.

Free Shipping for 10+ Devices

For those donating 10 or more phones, smartphones, or devices, we provide a free shipping option. Before shipping, please follow these pre-shipping steps.

How To Recycle Cell Phones

1. Back up your data.
2. Turn off ‘Find My iPhone’ or remove Google accounts.
3. Erase all data and remove SIM cards.
4. Print a pre-paid shipping label.
5. Print and affix a battery warning label to each package.
6. Package your devices carefully and ship them to us.

Self-Paid Label

For donations of fewer than 10 devices, please use our self-paid label. By covering the shipping costs yourself, you help us to allocate more resources directly to our programs. Your device donation and shipping costs are tax-deductible. Follow the steps on our website to prepare your devices for shipping safely.

If you have any questions or need guidance on how to donate your devices, please visit our contact page.

For more information on how your donation helps and the process involved, check out our frequently asked questions.

The next time you upgrade your devices, make sure to recycle old cell phones through Cell Phones For Soldiers, where your old electronics can have new life benefiting our nation’s heroes.

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In the wake of these losses, it may be difficult to feel thankful this holiday season. But giving thanks isn’t an empty gesture. It’s a deliberate activity that can actually improve our moods and relationships. Researchers have found that when we spend time thinking about the things we feel thankful for—rather than cataloging our grievances—we can become not only emotionally healthier, but physically healthier. In other words, we are happier when we are grateful. 

Gratitude is powerful stuff.

So, in this atypical holiday season, Cell Phones For Soldiers encourages you to find whatever ways you can to express thanks, whether that’s in a prayer, a mental note, a card, a call, or by giving back. In that spirit, we’ll share some of the many things that make us say “thank you” this Thanksgiving:

We’re thankful for the brave men and women serving our country at home and abroad. Their sacrifices never go unnoticed.

We’re thankful to our veterans, who protected our freedoms.

We’re thankful for the nurses, doctors, first responders, technicians, front-line workers, and elder caregivers who have not let their guard down once during this pandemic. We’re thankful for the researchers who have developed the vaccines that will make 2021 a safer and healthier year.

We’re thankful for the teachers who have done everything in their power to reach kids this year.

We’re thankful to our family and friends. Even though the pandemic has limited in-person gathering, our love and support for one another remains as strong as ever.

We’re thankful for the supporters who have kept Cell Phones For Soldiers going for 16 years. Every donation, no matter the size, helps us in our mission. Last month, a woman reached out to ask how to donate her late husband’s phone—he was a Marine who had recently passed away. Every donation has a story, and we honor them all. 

We’re thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

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But we also know that the weeks, months, and even years leading up to that moment are a struggle for everyone involved, not just for the troops coming home.

Parents worry when their sons and daughters are in harm’s way. Children miss mom or dad during important milestones like birthdays and graduations. And spouses and partners have to hold down the fort at home, shouldering the stress of uncertainty while their loved one is deployed.

As much as we love seeing those sweet, emotional videos, we know that service involves much more than a happy return home.

And that’s why we are proud at Cell Phones For Soldiers to help families maintain those connections in every moment leading up to those reunions.

Since 2004, we have provided more than 400 million minutes of free talk time to deployed troops. We send about 2,500 calling cards every week to help our servicemen and women stay in touch with their loved ones at home.

It is our mission to help make deployments a little less stressful for military families, and to raise the morale of our troops serving all over the world.

We can only do this with your help! We can turn your unwanted cell phones, smartphones, and mobile devices into calling cards for our troops. If you don’t have a device to donate, you can support our mission with a cash donation. Even $5 helps to give a military family a meaningful conversation.

Visit our donation page to learn more and help us keep those connections going for our troops and their loved ones!

Cell Phones For Soliders is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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That’s why, almost 16 years later, we find it so inspiring when we learn about young people stepping up for a great cause. And it’s why, last week, Rob traveled to Michigan to meet with some of our most dedicated young supporters.

Lake Orion High School held its 6^th annual Cell Out For Soldiers. About 1,800 students and adults at LOHS gave up their phones for a day. For each phone given up, a donation was made to Cell Phones For Soldiers. Cell Out, in its first five years, raised more than $20,000 for Cell Phones For Soldiers, and they hoped to raise another $8,000 this year.

In addition to helping our troops serving abroad—we send phone cards to help defray the cost of secure international calls, which can be very expensive—Cell Out had an added benefit for the school: Without the distraction of cell phones, students took the time to communicate face-to-face, creating a more engaging community for the day.

Fox 2 Detroit reporter Roop Raj was on hand during this year’s Cell Out and captured the spirit of this special day at LOHS. The video also does a great job of sharing the story of Cell Phones For Soldiers.

If you are a student or a school employee who is interested in holding a similar event at your school; or a supporter interested in hosting a Cell Phones For Soldiers donation drive at your church, business, scout troop, or community organization, you can get started by visiting www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com or emailing us at info@cellphonesforsoldiers.com.

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