If you need no introduction to this wonderful project, and want to just get on with getting your blog/website participating, the signup link is here.

Background:

This year, while there is a reduction in military action, there still are men and women in the field, who are at risk of being injured. There are those, of course, presently in the military medical system who have injuries that can be circumvented or need therapy that can be provided by technology.

Beginning this Independence Day in 2012, Soldier’s Angels will begin the annual fundraising efforts to provide funding for laptops with voice recognition software, Wiis and GPS units to be provide at no cost to military members or care facilities to help these men and women get back closer to normalcy in their lives, after serving their country and us.

Know these things about the annual fundraising:

• All the donated funds go to the equipment, or the delivery to the people/facilities. You don’t often come across a charity project that devotes the funds right to the “end users.”
• While the 4 “service teams” are listed for the donations, all the money goes to one account, and is spent to provide to those in need, regardless of their service affiliation. The teams are merely a ways for the supporters to have a little friendly competition among themselves to satisfy their fix for a little old school interservice rivalry.

The VALOur-IT (Voice Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops) project was an accidental program, begun in 2005, when a blogger was injured by an IED in Iraq. From there, this project of all volunteer help, has provided over 6000 laptops to those who cannot use their hands or have vision issues. For years, they have all been brand new units, set up with Dragon Naturally Speaking software.

Please consider helping out in some (or all) of the following ways:

• Join the list of sites/blogs and get it to your readership
• Get the link to Soldier’s Angels VALOur-IT donation page and send it to your email list
• Lobby your workplace to allow you to post/pass out a flyer with this information to the employees
• See if your employer has matching funds for donations to this project and get that word out to your co-workers
• Present this information to your social networks, the digital ones, and the real ones, too!
• Post the information in local coffee shops/restaurants and other places with community bulletin boards (check with the management first, which is another opportunity to discuss this project with those who are not aware of the work)

Thank you for reading this and considering taking this information viral! The people who have benefited for the donations over the last 7 years have been given a precious gift and are grateful for the equipment the has helped them get back into life!

The fund drive will run from today through the 14th of July. Don’t know what VALOur-IT is? Click the link.

The reader’s digest version: For those wounded with sight or mobility issues keeping them from using a computer like most people do, Soldier’s Angels has a project to provide new laptop computers with Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software to them. Their to keep, to help them get re-connected with family and friends and battle buddies, and for the future, it’s good work skill development.

So…spread the word, beat the bushes, spam your email list, beg at the local Starbucks for help for this wonderful program that has provided now in excess of 6000+ laptops!

Donate to Soldier’s Angels Project Valour-IT

Chip in…it’s well worth the money and it is changed/has changed lives.

For those without a Naval background, “BZ” is signal flag code for “Well Done.”

It’s been over for a few days, but the final totals, minus some that will trickle in via the mail for the VALOur-IT was:

Amazing. The beginning goal was $60K. The Army sprinted out of the blocks and blew throught their $15K “fair share” and had to bump the goal to keep it easy to see. They pushed their meter to $25K, and then the Marines, outflaked them and everybody else…..The Jarheads powered through the muck and went north of $30K to an amazed audience. Of course a nod from Michelle Malkin didn’t hurt at all, now did it?

Thanks to one and all for spreading the word on this wonderful, life changing project, that puts wounded soldiers, sailors. airmen, Coast Guardsmen and Marines back into the world via technology.

See you next year, but, donations for this, and the many other projects of Soldier’s Angels are gracefully accepted all year long.

Blogs get so far, email reaches more…but what about handing our business cards in the office or at the bar or the networking meetings and seminars you attend for the next few weeks?

First off, I’ll say this: I’m not graphics artist and I’m no savvy marketeer. If you can do a better card…please do, just know you will be running a tight deadline to get them in your hands in a quantity to get to lots of people inexpensively fast, beginning 10/26. I’m going to “carpet bomb” the local area…in hopes of getting one more method of exposure for the VALOur-IT campaign moving this year.

I designed these (set up for 3.75″x2.25″ for full bleed):

Click on the pictures to get to the ones made for 300dpi, if you’d like to borrow the artwork for your purposes to promote the Soldier’s Angels VALOur-IT 2009 fund raising campaign.

If you’d just like a bunch to show up at your door (no shipping cost!), has these on file and mine were ordered yesterday. Jamie is the owner and can get some headed your way, too.

Here’s my plan and feel free to steal this, also

Enlist the many people I know locally to hand these out in the circles of influence thay travel in. I’m in a great networking organization, Free Networking International (which is free, btw), that has over 40 chapters meeting weekly in just the multi city area around me. Between all the chapter directors and other events held, I will have help. I’m also going to go to neighbors, two of the local Chambers of Commerce where I know the office staff (they talk to many people each day) and drop them off there, too.

After tht, I’ll put them out to the local businesses I go to and have gotten to know the owners there, too.

So, what’s so hard about that? A few thousand cards should be good reminders to check out the Soldier’s Angels site for donations when they get home and clean out thier pockets and purses from the days work.

Anyhow, Jamie is cost effective and better yet…can have them at your door 3-5 business days after the order. No set up, it’s all done. Just get the word out!

What is Operation DVD? Apocalypto ipod

The Station Agent psp

• La conjura de El Escorial video
  
  Paparazzi psp

Operation DVD is an appeal to patriotic Americans to donate their new and used DVDs which are then shipped to our fighting men and women overseas.

Entertainment is a concept that is difficult at best for our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even baseball games are no longer possible because of snipers, land mines, bombs and terrorist activities. There are no passes to go to town and the most common remark is: “How boring it is.”

Operation DVD continues the tradition started by the great Bob Hope to Provide Entertainment for our Troops.

Operation DVD started in Palm Springs, CA with a call from a minister explaining that a Supply Sergeant, home on leave, was asking church members for DVDs.

Over 30,000 specially designed “Collection Boxes” for donated new and used DVDs have already been located nationwide at schools, large chains, retail stores, restaurant chains, NASCAR races, churches, car dealers and the list goes on.

The real supporters of Operation DVD are mostly kids — 14,000 Young Marines, Boy and Girl Scouts, children preparing for their Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, individual students wanting to start local drives at their schools, Honor Societies, 4-H Clubs, etc.

It is only now that major corporations (Lockheed Martin, General Mills, ESPN, Johnson Space Center, Nuclear Generating Plants across the country, etc.) are coming forward to encourage their employees to donate new and used DVDs for the Troops.

Once filled, the “Collection Boxes” are sent to one of thirteen (13) “Sorting/Deployment” centers across the nation — Temecula, Los Angeles and Newbury Park, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina (2), Texas and Washington State. “Children Titles” are separated and sent to Servicemen’s families (Stateside) through the Family Readiness Group(s) of the National Guard.

“DVDs are definitely the #1 form of entertainment over here.” – SSG David Vance

Please visit www.OperationDVD.net or call 310-995-3792License to Wed video

Ambassadors in muddy boots. This is what they do. There are many stories like this, where Americans have reached out to serve a need for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Please consider helping out in this case.

Soldier David Howell seeks medical care for burned Iraqi child
by Beata Mostafavi | Flint Journal

Monday March 23, 2009, 8:16 AM

Courtesy photo

Dragon Storm dvd

Iraqi 12-year-old Mohammed and Maj. David Howell, a physician’s assistant from a Flint-based National Guard battalion.

Mum & Dad trailer

Le avventure di Pinocchio film

American Gangster movies
FLINT, Michigan —

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie movie

In a two-room, dirt-floor dwelling shared by a family of seven in Iraq, 12-year-old Mohammed awaits word that he can come to America.

In Michigan, Maj. David Howell, a physician’s assistant from a Flint-based National Guard battalion, works to bring the badly burned Iraqi boy here for surgeries that could give him a new future in his home country.

“He asked me, in his own words, if I could help save him,” said Howell, 55, of Grand Ledge, who met Mohammed in November on his second tour of Iraq.

Mohammed received his visa a week ago but is still getting funneled through government channels for his planned visit, which could be weeks away.

Meanwhile, a team of surgeons is studying Mohammed’s photographs, going over each burn, each blister and scar, planning for a series of plastic and reconstructive surgeries.
[…]

To add some more background to this saga, read this part of the story:

Howell also learned that Mohammed’s father had worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Marines — and it cost him his life.

Insurgents tracked the family down, murdering Mohammed’s father and uncle, leaving him, his mother and five siblings without a father or income.

“You have this Iraqi boy injured as an infant and a family that has really suffered because the husband came to the assistance of the U.S. military,” said Howell, a father of three who has established the nonprofit Martyr Medical Fund for Children

• A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar… film

to raise money for the cause. “His father was doing the right thing and lost his life because of it.

You can donate online here.