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.

Tablets: The New Mobile Device

My post today comes to you courtesy of the Heartland Mobile Council’s blog, where I penned a short article yesterday about tablets. Are they mobile?

Tablets have been touted as hybrid devices, filling the niche that existed between the laptop PC and the smartphone. While this may be true (just don’t tell that to anyone that was on the netbook wagon a short while ago), for marketers, the tablet is essentially a mobile device and should be treated as such – in my opinion.

With some tablets, this is a natural association to make; many look and function like souped-up versions of their manufacturers’ top-tier smartphone. But the most popular tablet, the iPad, has been positioned as unique from any existing mobile device, and so marketers have approached this platform with strategies that differ from those utilized with the mobile channel.

This, however, is changing, and as tablets become more popular will continue to change.

Part of the reason for this evolution is a gradual refinement in marketers’ approach to mobile marketing. Just a few years ago, bilateral communication, through voice or SMS (text messaging), was the pinnacle of mobile marketing. Now it is a truly rich environment, hinging as much on native apps as on the burgeoning mobile web.

While direct marketing continues to be effective, it’s no longer the only tool in any company’s marketing kit. Tablets, without the universal capability for voice and SMS communication, are the beneficiaries of this fleshed-out mobile marketing ecosystem. Many of the strategies aimed at the smartphone-owning market also translate to the tablet-owning market; rich native apps, access to the mobile web, and the combined capacity of a device that can both be taken on the go and features the computing power comparable to a laptop are all extensions of a robust mobile marketing strategy aimed at tablets.

Which, of course, leads to the other part of the reason that the tablet market will (and should be) considered a mobile market: the tablets themselves.

Since the iPad was introduced last year, the trend has been toward more, not less, direct connectivity. Apps have been developed to augment and improve the ability of most tablets to function as one-to-one communication devices, and every tablet features the critical portability aspect. The prevailing impression of tablet computers may be as couch-bound entertainment devices, but in reality, they’re built for the proverbial road.

Marketers ought to be capitalizing on these two aspects of the tablet trend. Location awareness should figure in heavily in tablet marketing strategies, just as it represents a fast-growing tactic in most mobile strategies. Apps that access the mobile web will eventually take precedence over native apps, just as that evolution is underway in the mobile sphere. Payment via tablet should become as prevalent as payment via smartphone, and tablet apps should become as monetized through placement and advertisement as mobile apps are.

By accepting that the tablet is the latest mobile technology to engage consumers – and not a ‘third-way’ niche product that necessitates a reinvention of the marketing wheel – marketers can begin to leverage this category to its fullest.

Of course, not everyone will agree with my view that the tablet is indeed a mobile device. What’s your take?

You can read the post on the HMC post here and click here for details of the HMC’s Tablet Seminar on April 13th to learn more and continue the discussion!