American public sends nearly $5 million in telephone support to troops

  • Published
  • By Judd Anstey
  • AAFES Media
DALLAS --  As personnel and temperatures "surge" in the Middle East, America continues to go above and beyond the call of duty to help Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and Sailors stay connected. In fact, contributions to the Department of Defense authorized phone card initiative, dubbed "Help Our Troops Call Home," are expected to soon surpass the $5 million mark.

"As of Aug. 4, the American public has generously sent $4.96 million in Military Exchange Global Prepaid phone cards since 'Help Our Troops Call Home' began in April 2004," said the Army & Air Force Exchange Service's Senior Enlisted Advisor Chief Master Sgt. Bryan Eaton. "At today's rate of 19 cents a minute for calls from phone centers in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom, current contributions represent more than 25 million minutes of free calls for our deployed troops."

The "Help Our Troops Call Home" effort, which allows anyone to leverage deployed military exchange communication platforms on behalf of American troops, makes it possible to send Global Prepaid phone cards to individual service members (designated by the sender) or even "any service member" through various charitable partners.

To date, 128,440 individual orders for more than 210,000 Military Exchange Global Prepaid phone cards have been processed. More than 23,980 of these orders have been earmarked for "any service member" and distributed via charities such as the American Red Cross, Air Force Aid Society, Fisher House Foundation, Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, Soldier & Family Assistance Center and USO.

Anyone can help military families stay in touch, and maybe even push total "Help Our Troops Call Home" contributions beyond $5 million, by simply logging on to aafes.org or calling 800-527-2345. From there, dads, aunts, neighbors and even civic groups can send any one of three Military Exchange Global Prepaid Phone cards, including a 550-minute denomination card capable of providing more than two hours of call time from any of 77 phone centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait to the United States.