Technology Helps Make Deployed Troops Feel Closer To Home
Thanks to technology, thousands of American troops serving away from home are feeling a little closer to home.
Programs connecting faraway U.S. service members with family and friends include:
Veterans of Foreign Wars’ Operation Uplink
Texas-based Sport Clips Haircuts recently made a $400,000 gift to the VFW’s Operation Uplink. The donation is expected to link more than 350,000 service members to their families this holiday season. The VFW said the $400,000 gift will provide an estimated 6 million minutes of free “talk time” via satellite telephones for deployed and hospitalized military personnel.
Sport Clips’ contribution will make it possible to sponsor “Free Call Days” for American troops once a month in 2011, including Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day, the VFW said.
VFW member and military veteran Gordon Logan, founder and CEO of Sport Clips, said: “The memory of wanting to call home during my days overseas is one that stays with me. It makes me even more grateful for those who are willing to join us in backing our men and women in uniform, especially during the time they spend away from home and loved ones.”
Comcast’s Troop Greetings On Demand
This annual service delivers holiday greetings from military personnel stationed thousands of miles away to loved ones back home to watch whenever and as often as they want.
For the seventh consecutive year, Comcast Corp. is offering greetings at no additional cost to digital cable customers through the end of January 2011.
To compile the greetings, Comcast secured hundreds of videotapes from the Army/Air Force Hometown News Service and edited them into short video greetings. These greetings are from military personnel and civilian staff who are stationed at bases in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Japan, Alaska, Korea and other remote locations.
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