by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Joann Mahle wants your cell phone.
She doesn't need to make an urgent call but Mahle, vice president of Ann Teague Bonding Agency, is collecting used cell phones for people who one day might need to make a truly desperate call.
For about five years Mahle has been collecting boxes and boxes of used mobile phones at her E. Forsyth Street office for the Wireless Foundation's Call to Protect program, a national campaign that matches victims of domestic abuse with emergency-use cell phones.
So far she has gathered and donated more than 1,500 from her bail bonds office.
"There was an interview on the Today Show that was talking about cell phones for domestic abuse victims," she said. "So we started collecting phones."
Though her office is now an official donation drop-off location for the Call to Protect program, Mahle said she had some trouble in the beginning of her phone collection campaign with finding an organization willing to take the old phones off her hands.
"I was not just a crazy lady collecting old cell phones," she said.
Once word caught on about what the phones were to be used for, Mahle said she signed up with Call to Protect and soon found herself swamped with cell phones of all kinds, from the old bag phones to the newer flip-style phones. Mahle said she even received multiple boxes of old phones from a few of the larger downtown-based corporations. Currently, she has several half-full cardboard boxes sitting around the office filled with a variety of cell phones, carrying cases, car chargers and old cell phone batteries. Some of the phones are pretty beat up but Mahle said she will accept any donation.
After enough phones are collected at the numerous drop off locations across the country, usually a boxful, they are sent to a refurbishing company in Michigan where the phones are cleaned, repaired and reprogrammed for a new user. And if a phone is in really bad shape it is salvaged for parts, Mahle said.
While several of the phones are loaded with air time and emergency numbers and distributed to domestic abuse victims and shelters, David Diggs, executive director of the Wireless Foundation, said most of the refurbished phones are sold internationally to raise funds for many different domestic abuse prevention programs.
Diggs said when the Call to Protect program was started in 1999, fewer people had cell phones than today and the main purpose of the program was "to get some phones out there to the victims." But now that approximately more than 180 million people in the United States have cell phones, Diggs said the demand for the emergency-use phones for victims dwindled because so many already had their own. The organization found itself left with thousands of cell phones lying around and thousands more coming in through the mail every day.
"When we started the program, the thinking was that we were entering a time when people were getting new phones and had nothing to do with the old ones," said Diggs. "The original premise was that we would take the phones, refurbish them, match them with air time and get them out to the survivors and counselors. But we wound up with a far greater number of phones than we could reasonably match with air time gifts. On the fly, we had to figure out what to do with them."
Though many of the donated phones are pretty much obsolete in the United States, Diggs said the foundation discovered that there is a high demand and a major market for older cellular phone technology in other parts of the world. Now, after a few years of selling the refurbished phones, Diggs said the Wireless Foundation has been able to provide several millions of dollars in cash grants to various domestic violence prevention programs while continuing to provide emergency-use phones to victims in need.
Diggs said even though demand for the emergency-use cell phones has subsided somewhat, there is still a major need for that "very important lifeline of communication and security." Last year the program distributed more than 2,000 of the emergency-use phones.
Besides being a way to raise money for domestic violence programs and giving victims more physical security, Diggs said one of the most important aspects of the Call to Protect program has been the amount of awareness the campaign has raised.
"(The wireless technology) industry was one of the few industries willing to take this issue on," he said. "Domestic violence is less sunny of a topic than is generally involved with corporate campaigns but we took a leadership position with the issue. I think we have helped the dialogue on the issue and have gotten people to talk about it more than they were in 1996. We have really helped with the awareness of domestic violence."
As she looks at one of the dusty black cell phones in one of her collection boxes, Mahle at the bail bonds office says that awareness is one of the main reasons she started collecting the old phones. She said she also does it to give back to the community.
"Domestic violence is a very serious problem," said Mahle. "We see a lot of domestic violence cases through our business. It is a very serious crime but we make our money through these people's pain. We feel like we should give something back to the community and this is just our way of giving back."