Brittany and Robbie Bergquist are teenage siblings who didn’t even own a cell phone in 2004, when they heard that an Army reservist faced a $7,600 bill for making calls home from Iraq. The two teens decided to try and help pay his bill. They took their piggybank funds and talked to their friends in an effort to help pay the bill.

They founded Cell Phones for Soldiers based on three ideas: most people have an old, inactive cell phone lying around; they’d probably donate it to the right cause; and they would agree that, as Brittany puts it, “Everyone has a right to call home.”

In three years, an effort that began with a piggybank raid and a car wash has turned into a booming home-front charity – one that has turned its founders’ lives upside down and won them devoted friends throughout the military and beyond.

Cell Phones for Soldiers solicits unwanted cell phones, sells them to a recycler and uses the money to buy pre-paid phone cards that are shipped to the war zone.

Race co-director John Carroll stated, “We are very happy to work with CPFS. Our goal is to collect over 2,500 phones. Most people have one or more old phones at home. They need to bring them with them when they come to get their numbers. We will take all types of cell phones.”

“I believe,” Carroll continued, “that any phone CPFS gets can is worth $5 of free minutes in a call home for some soldier overseas. CPFS recycles the phones, gets money for them, and then turns the cash into phone cards that are distributed to the men and women overseas. We have a lot of phones laying around, that could help a lot of troops call their families.”