My Monthly Charity July 2008

My Monthly Charity July 2008 will be the Fight Crime: Invest in Kids organization. This is a national non-profit organization focused on crime prevention by educating kids. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is run by top law enforcement officials including police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders and violence survivors.

“America must cut the pipeline that funnels young people into lives of crime and violence. We take a hard-nosed look at research on what keeps kids from becoming criminals and put that information in the hands of policy-makers and the public.”

The organization focuses on 4 areas in achieving it’s goals including:

• Early education programs - educating prekindergarten kids to put them on the right path helps prevent them from becoming a criminal.
• Child abuse and neglect prevention - promoting better parenting through early education for new parents along home visiting programs to prevent abuse and neglect.
• After-school programs - research has shown that the after school time from 2pm - 6pm is known as the “prime time for juvenile crimes” where an estimated 14 million kids are unsupervised during that time frame. Offering supervised programs during that critical time helps prevent kids from committing crimes.
• Intervention with troubled kids - through close supervision and interventions this helps keep kids from committing criminal acts.

Fight Crime: Invest in Kids has a great mission with lots of research and facts to back up their strategy to fighting crime. If there are changes that need to be made to prevent crime, investing in kids is the perfect approach to the problem. Kids are the future and it’s the best investment out there for a better future.

My Monthly Charity June 2008

I know this is really late but I’m making it up because I missed it for the month of June and will do my July charity soon too as the month comes to a close.

For the June 2008 charity I have selected the Cell Phones for Soldiers program. This charity focuses on getting people to send in their used cell phones for recycling to raise money for calling cards for troops overseas.

“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 2008. 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.”

This is a great charity that was started by siblings Robbie and Brittany Bergquist when they were 12 and 13 years old in Norwell, Mass in 2004. They started with the goal of helping soldiers overseas call home and now they have grown into a major 501c3 non-profit organization that has raised over 1 million dollars in donations and sent more than 400,000 prepaid calling cards to soldiers overseas. As cell phones for soldiers grows they have continued plans to raise more money and expand the program to help soldiers communicate with their families.

I have a few used cell phones lying around that I plan on donating to Cell Phones for Soldiers. Donating your used cell phone doesn’t cost you anything either. You have the option to drop it off at over 3000 drop off locations in the US or print a prepaid shipping label. It’s simple and free you just got to take a couple of simple actions and you’d be helping troops call home.

I love the idea behind this charity and it’s simplicity. There are tons of used cell phones out there and simply donating something you don’t need anymore can help our troops overseas keep in touch with family back home. It’s amazing what these kids have started and I commend them on their great idea with continued success on helping soldiers overseas.