Teens Make a Difference for Troops
by: Laura McCloskey

Some teenagers spend their extra time texting their friends or stressing
about their school work...Then there is Brittany and Robbie Bergquist. The
sister and brother team from Norwell, Massachusetts decided it was not
fair that soldiers fighting overseas had to pay outrageous phone bills to call
home. “Back in 2004, Brittany and I heard a story about a soldier who rang
up about an $8,000.00 phone bill, so we got $21 of our own money and
started this organization,” said Robbie.

Brittany, age 17, and Robbie, age 15 built Cell Phones for Soldiers, a non-
profit organization that provides soldiers overseas with pre-paid phone
cards to call home. The sister and brother duo started the organization
thinking they would raise money to help the soldier pay off his $8,000
phone bill. They had car washes, bake sales, and raffles to raise money.
Then, Brittany and Robbie asked
other people to get involved by
donating their old cell phones.
They made money by recycling
the old cell phones for of average
$5 each. Slowly the organization
grew. By the end of 2007, they had
provided more than $1.4 million
in phone cards to U.S. soldiers
across the globe.

How does it work? The company
Recellular pays Cell Phones for
Soldiers for each phone they
collect through donations. Brittany
and Robbie encourage schools, churches and other organizations across
the country to set up collection bins and send the used phones through
the mail to Cell Phone for Soldiers. Soldiers have to contact the
organization either through the organization’s website or via a loved one to
request a phone card. Cell Phones for Soldiers then sends a phone card to
where the soldier is stationed.
At the end of 2007, Brittany and Robbie started receiving incredible
amounts of attention for starting Cell Phones for Soldiers. They appeared
on ABC’s The View, the CBS’s Evening News with Kaite Couric, CNN, and
more.

Just like other teens, Brittany and Robbie still attend school and do their
homework. Robbie is president of his student council at school and
Brittany plays soccer. They also find time to run Cell Phone for Soldiers.

How do they do it? Brittany and Robbie receive a lot of help from their
parents who are both school teachers. Their parents helped them start the
“business” side of the non-profit organization. Photographs show Brittany
and Robbie organizing boxes and boxes of recycled phones.” It takes a lot
out of us, but when we go to sleep at know we know we did everything we
could do that day,” said Brittany.

Why do they do it? Brittany and Robbie site the fact that they have two
cousins in the military overseas serving in Kosovo and Afghanistan. As
their organization started to grow, they found more stories of troops
unable to call home because it cost too much.
Just recently, Brittany and
Robbie received the endorsement
of the phone company AT&T. The
company now supports Cell
Phone for Soldiers by collecting
used cell phones at 1800 AT&T
stores across the country.

To date, Brittany and Robbie have
sent over 100,000 phone cards to
troops. Their new goal is to raise
$750,000 a month so that they
can provide phone cards for each soldier that contacts them. What’s next
for Brittany and Robbie? AT&T recently rewarded Brittany and Robbie
each with $100,000 college scholarships for all of their hard work.
Brittany says she wants to go to Harvard and Robbie wants to attend an Ivy
League school.