AT&T Inc. has announced that AT&T-owned wireless store locations in Michigan have begun serving as wireless phone recycling drop-off sites for a charity benefiting U.S. military families. Beginning this month, all 1,800 AT&T-owned wireless stores nationwide, including one in Saginaw, are accepting donated phones for the Cell Phones for Soldiers charitable program.

  
AT&T has also donated more than 30,000 prepaid phone cards, valued at more than $270,000, to Cell Phones for Soldiers to help connect more military families. AT&T is also providing the nonprofit organization with a new volume discount for purchasing additional phone cards.

  
Cell Phones for Soldiers (www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com) was established by two Norwell, Mass., teenagers to help buy prepaid phone cards to send to U.S. military members who are serving overseas. The teens, Brittany Bergquist, 16, and Robbie Bergquist, 15, created a nonprofit organization that collects and recycles used wireless phones. With proceeds from the recycling, the organization then purchases prepaid phone cards for military families.

  
Since the Bergquists founded the program in April 2004, they have raised more than $1 million and have sent more than 75,000 phone cards to troops overseas.

  
In addition to its support for Cell Phones for Soldiers, AT&T announced the donation of an additional 10,000 phone cards directly to troops in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and other overseas regions in the weeks surrounding Independence Day. The donation is part of an ongoing parallel campaign to support military families with 50,000 free prepaid phone cards — valued at more than $450,000 — throughout 2007.

  
For more than 85 years, AT&T has remained dedicated to supporting active military personnel, their families and veterans through charitable contributions, sponsorships, the hiring of military veterans and maintaining policies that support reservists when called to duty.