Hope Phones

I was watching Good Morning America yesterday while I was getting ready for the day. They have a lot of great stories day to day, but this one about Hope Phones kept popping into my head all day today.

Hope phones takes your old phone and uses it to help save lives in developing countries.

Josh Nesbit, a Standford University, volunteered at an AIDS clinic in Malawi. While there he reported to abcnews.com that;

"This particular hospital was serving about a quarter million people, spread a hundred miles in every direction. So you literally had patients walking 60, 80, a hundred miles to access care. Basically one nurse would get onto a motorcycle and drive 10 hours a day trying to track down patients,"

He figured that if these people had the ability to text or call for help a lot of lives could be saved. He worked on software to get his idea in gear. But still didn't have enough phones for the high demand. This turned into Hope Phones. Josh says; 

"I was hit with this statistic, that we're discarding 500,000 cell phones every single day. That means half a million phones are going into trash cans, and desk drawers daily."

 

That  looks something like this!

Each phone is worth between $15 and $50. Nesbit realized that by recycling  just 1 percent of those phones, he could raise money to buy new phones for a million health workers.

Nesbit Says, "Your old phone will turn into two or three phones for health workers. Every one of those phones will connect another 50 to 100 families to emergency services and essential services."

With the money from old phones in the United States, 50 million people in Africa and across the globe can get better healthcare. 

The best thing about this is that the shipping for the phone you send is totally free! It is paid for by sponsors related to HopePhones. All you have to do is go to HopePhones.org, click the red Donate Phones button, follow the directions, print up a shipping label and put it in the mail. You have just helped save lives all over the world! Simple as that!

You can also set up a collection campaign at your school, corporation, town, etc. If you decide to do this, you fill out a quick form at HopePhones.org and they will send you all of the collection materials-free! The materials include a poster, collection box, shipping box for all the phones you’ll collect, and prepaid shipping labels.

HopePhones has a FAQ's part of the site that answers all of the questions that I had. Such as, does the phone condition matter? What happens to the phone once I send it in? And how do I delete information on my phone before sending it in?

I have three phones that the kids play with once in a blue moon or they get just put into a drawer when the are in the way. Why not send them to a better place? I will be sending mine in tomorrow. You can put yours to good use too. It only takes a few minutes.

 

photo courtesy of act.mtv.org

photo courtesy of pih.org

*all italicized comments courtesy of abcnews.go.com