Secure the Call

Girl Scouts across the nation are gearing up to hold Secure the Call (STC) sponsored cell phones drives to help seniors and victims of domestic violence. Not only will the Girl Scouts help to keep thousands of phones out of landfills – and their toxins out of our soil – they will help give those phones a new life as 911-emergency only phones for those who need them most.

Secure the Call’s goal is to have at least 100 Girl Scout troops organize drives in honor of 100 years of girl scouting. Girl Scout Councils throughout the USA are taking many approaches to collecting phones. Some plan to host Secure the Call donation booths at their local 100-Year celebrations as well as asking all of girls that attend the event to bring at least one old phone with them. Others are requesting STC’s cell phone collection barrel that they’ll use to hold collection drives.

We are very excited to now be involved with the Allen county police department. We would like to thank them for all their hard work in helping secure the call!

Goliad, Texas may be small, but it is the third oldest municipality in the state and is literally drenched in history stretching back almost five hundred years. Founded in the 16^th century by the Spaniards as Santa Dorotea it became Goliad on February 4, 1829. Today’s Goliad County has 1,000 square miles and only 7,000 citizens.

Like many rural communities nationwide, Goliad struggles with an aging population. The  hoping to prevent younger people from bolting to more exciting environments thought to be found in Dallas or Houston. Eighteen percent of Goliad’s population is over 65 compared with 10% statewide.

As the head law enforcement officer in the County, Sheriff Robert DeLaGarza and his head deputy William J. “Bill” Schaefer oversee the usual duties of a Sheriff’s department and still find time and resources to pursue special programs such as D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance Education and Training)

Beyond that, they’re vitally concerned with the welfare of the growing population of Seniors within the County, taking responsibility for providing each resident in need with a free working 911 access cell phone and charger. The first distribution was at the Senior Citizens Center in early April, attended by Sheriff DeLaGarza and Chief Deputy Schaefer. A follow-up program is planned at the La Bahia Adult Day Care center.

Secure the Call wishes to thank and recognize the efforts of Chief Deputy Schaefer as the head of the program. As our first Community Partner to distribute phones in Texas, we are proud to be associated with him and the Sheriff’s Department of Goliad.

Location, Location, Location.  Two months ago, a bank in North Carolina that permanently hosts our barrel moved their collection bin from a remote corner where very few of their customers knew it was there to a nice spot in the bank where you had to see it if you stood in the teller line.  The difference was remarkable.  For the past two years that they’ve been collecting for us, the barrel would fill up every three to four months.  Now, it’s filling up every six weeks.  

It turns out; they only moved the barrel less than ten feet.  But what a difference ten feet can make.  We love every company and organization that helps us collect the phones we need for our program.  And we’re grateful for all the work you do for Secure the Call.  As an all-volunteer organization, we rely solely on the generosity of the community for everything we do.  We would never tell anyone where to place their barrel.  That’s always up to you.  But as in real estate – Location, Location, Location.  

Transwestern, a privately held, national commercial real estate firm has volunteered to help Secure the Call by holding a one-month drive at over 75 office buildings that they manage in the cities of Chicago and Washington, DC.  In partnership with Wasteless Environmental, the nations largest waste reduction consulting firm and ???, a ????, Secure the Call will be providing collection barrels with customized signs in most of their buildings located in two of the biggest office markets in the country.  Our thanks to Robert Durrell and Stan Smith for pushing this to completion at their firms.  

Luckily for Secure the Call, both Transwestern and Wasteless Environmental are national organizations with offices located throughout the United States and Canada.  Hopefully, this will be the start of beautiful relationship and will lead to collection drives at big office buildings everywhere.  As a collection site, large office buildings do very well for us.  Last week, a building in Dallas held a similar drive and in a little over four weeks collected over 75 phones!

To get a collection barrel for your building, give us a call.  You can use our generic sign for the barrel or we can customize a sign for your company. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 4, 2003

Washington, D.C. – Police departments and sheriff’s offices from Maryland, Virginia and the District have formed a coalition to help collect cell phones to be converted into 911 emergency service phones.

The program is called Secure the Call and is being lead by a non-profit organization by the same name based in Greenbelt, Md. Government departments in these areas have been distributing emergency service phones to the public, but they have not been able to meet the demand. In most cases, these departments are not equipped to undertake the work necessary to convert the phones. Secure the Call
will be coordinating the collection effort and will be performing the work necessary on behalf of these departments.

Any used cell phone can be programmed to dial 911 even if it is not part of a wireless carrier’s network. Groups that need such phones include local police departments, neighborhood watch groups, senior citizen centers and domestic violence organizations.

Approximately 70 percent of the phones collected through the program will be donated to members of the coalition so that they may be given to the people that need them. The other 30 percent will be sold to the recycled phones market to pay for the reprogramming of the donated phones.

“Community policing works best when we have an active and engaged community that works closely with the police,” said D.C. Metro Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. “Secure the Call will help make these partnerships happen.”

A website (www.givecellphones.com) is available with more information on Secure the Call. Secure the Call may also be contacted at (301) 891-2900 for more information.