Want to Recycle Your Old or Busted Mobile Phone to Raise Money for Women in Developing Countries?

I don't normally post our agency press releases on my blog, but I believe this event, Recycle Your Mobile Phone to Eradicate Poverty, is super important and will be of interest to both the mobile community and the general public. Disclosure – we do pro-bono work for the Heartland Mobile Council and are enlisting media support.

If you want to help, or know anyone who would be interested in attending or donating their mobile phone to help eradicate poverty and raise money for female entrepreneurs in developing countries, please contact me at http://www.blogger.com/vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.

You can also find out more at www.heartlandmobilecouncil.org or http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1439057259.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Mobile Phones Go Global: Heartland Mobile Council and Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program Host Event to Recycle Cell Phones, End Global Poverty through Entrepreneurship

Fundraising Event with Guest of Honor Martin Cooper, Inventor of the Mobile Phone, Will Raise Money for Female Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries

Chicago, April 21, 2011 – The Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program, in association with the Heartland Mobile Council and Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone, will host a fundraising event to help raise awareness for women in poverty on Thursday, May 19, 2011 from 6:00–9:00PM at the Google Chicago office.

Attendees’ old cell phones and PDAs will be collected at the event for the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program, which recycles phones and collects the proceeds to benefit microfinance organizations. Proceeds collected from the event will be donated to the Grameen Bank, which provides poverty-stricken women with microfinance loans which help them to create small businesses which can eventually sustain and support their families.

Assisting the Entrepreneurial Efforts of Those in Developing Countries

In our increasingly technologically savvy culture, owning a cell phone is a necessity for entrepreneurs who need to be able to conduct business deals and respond to emergencies at any time, day or night. But what about entrepreneurs in developing countries who barely have enough food to eat, much less these tech advantages that are often taken for granted? That’s a question that the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program is helping to answer.

As an organization dedicated to aiding underprivileged peopled in developing countries while also helping the environment, the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty program collects donations of old cell phones and PDAs, which are no longer being used by their owners, and recycles the devices to collect money for those in need . In support of this effort, the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program has partnered with Chicago-based Heartland Mobile Council (HMC), to host a fundraising event on Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 6:00pm at the Google Chicago office. Special guest Martin Cooper, inventor of the world’s first mobile phone in 1973, will be speaking at the event to present his insights into the continually changing communication world and the important role it will play in future generations. “The world is shrinking as more people become connected through wireless devices; it is now possible to create, using a donated cell phone, a self-sustaining business in many emerging countries,” says Cooper.

From Microfinance to Mobile, An Ideal Nonprofit Partnership

The partnership between the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program and the Heartland Mobile Council (HMC) is a well-matched alliance, as the HMC is a nonprofit organization focused on educating brands on how to use mobile marketing effectively to promote their business. “We jumped at the chance to partner with Recycle to Eradicate Poverty, as their goal of eradicating poverty through connectivity is right in line with our mission and we are happy to provide them with an event stage to promote their cause,” says Hugh Park Jedwill, Executive Director of the HMC. “Our support of Grameen's micro-financing is a great way to connect the entrepreneurs of the Second City to the female entrepreneurs of the Third World.”

Proceeds from the event will benefit the Grameen Bank’s micro financing efforts in third world countries. Founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping female entrepreneurs in developing countries through microfinance. A widely-established method, microfinance provides small loans, or micro-loans, to impoverished people to start or expand small, self-sufficient businesses. Through their own ingenuity and drive, and with the support of the lending microfinance institution (MFI), poverty-stricken women are able start their journey out of poverty and into a better life.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their old cell phones and PDAs for recycling. Early bird tickets are $20 through May 6^th; after that date tickets will be $35.

Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1439057259.

For more information about the event or about the Heartland Mobile Council, please contact Amanda Williams at awilliams@thinkinkpr.com or Katie Norwood at knorwood@thinkinkpr.com.

About The Heartland Mobile Council
The Heartland Mobile Council is a Chicago-based non-profit organization whose mission is to educate brands on how to use mobile marketing effectively. The HMC is a safe forum for marketers and companies to learn how to use this new marketing channel to grow their businesses and enrich their brands. For more information, please visit http://heartlandmobilecouncil.org/, or follow us on Twitter @heartlandmobile.

More about the Recycle to Eradicate Poverty Program:

Recycle to Eradicate Poverty energizes organizations to collect used cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges to be recycled. The proceeds from those recycling efforts are used to provide microfinance loans as small as $50 to women entrepreneurs to create a small business, which can eventually sustain her family. For more information, please visit http://recycletoeradicatepoverty.com/.

About Martin Cooper:

Martin Cooper invented the mobile phone in 1973 in Chicago while working for Motorola. As the story goes, the first public cell phone call was made to his competitor at Bell Labs. At the press conference for the launch of the first commercially available mobile phone, he was asked about talk time of the phone; his reply was “It’s only 20 minutes, but that’s not a problem, it's so heavy you can’t hold the phone to your ear that long!” He continues to innovate and publicly speak through DYNA LLC, the company founded by Martin and his wife, Arlene Harris. For more information, visit http://www.dynallc.com/. Follow him on Twitter: @martymobile.

Why the lackluster mobile giving for Japan’s crises?

Last year, when Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake, solicitations for donations via SMS were everywhere.

Every Red Cross commercial featured both the Web site and the short code for mobile giving. The 90999 short code was plastered all over the televised benefit concert. The news media – as well as the nonprofit community – was abuzz with this new channel for charitable donations.

Times have changed – slightly.

As the crises surrounding the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan unfold, mobile giving has not been quite as prevalent as it was just a year ago for Haiti.

The Red Cross television commercials no longer trumpet their dedicated short code.

Click here to continue reading.

A Google search of news articles relating to SMS donations and Japan turns up only a few pages of results – and none focusing exclusively on mobile giving.

Individuals can still contribute to the relief effort via text, but neither the wireless carriers nor the organizations soliciting donations feel the need to tout their capacity to receive contributions via this channel like they did last year.

The preliminary numbers reflect this trend.

As of March 15, the Red Cross has raised a total of $1.7 million for relief efforts in Japan through text donations, compared with $25 million in the first five days after the Haiti earthquake.

The Center on Philanthropy suggests that the generally lower amount of the average text donation has dragged the total raised by the channel down somewhat.

But more to the point, The Nonprofit Times acknowledges that while mobile giving has “been active after this most recent disaster, it’s not been nearly as viral.”

So what gives? Or this case, what does not give? Why the slowdown in mobile donations? Should not a donation channel that is supposedly well-established, convenient and effective be enjoying more importance, not less?

A number of factors go into answering those questions.

More charities, more short codes
First, it is important to understand that the popularity of mobile giving among nonprofits skyrocketed in the months following Haiti.