Austin Cook
Equinox Staff
The Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention (MCVP) is asking Keene State College students to donate their old or broken phones for October’s Domestic Violence Awareness donation drive.
MCVP is a United Way agency and a New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence member. According to its website, MCVP was founded in 1978 to assist abused women and find options for living without violence. MCVP serves all of Cheshire County and 14 towns in western Hillsborough County. Their crisis hotline provides 24 hour a day, seven day a week access to workers trained in Crisis Intervention. They also offer crisis intervention and peer counseling to victims of domestic and sexual violence, either over the phone or face to face in order to provide emotional support, information about choices and options, assistance with problem-solving, develop safety plans and make appropriate referrals. Self-help support groups also provide support and meet weekly in Keene.
Assistant director for MCVP, Shanna Beckwith, said, “We are the only organization in the Monadnock Region that provides services to victims of domestic and sexual violence. We also help stalking victims. We try to prevent violence from occurring, through our education program at schools and throughout the community.”
MCVP programs are funded through private donations and grants from agencies, such as the Shelter Alliance and the United Way. The MCVP also raises money through fund drives. Beckwith pointed out that October is domestic violence awareness month, and every October the MCVP organizes a phone drive to help raise funds for their programs.
Beckwith explained, “We take all the cell phones from the drive and turn them in to Shelter Alliance. We accept all the phones donated regardless of them functioning or the condition. The Shelter Alliance will recycle the phones for us. They will either wipe the data from the phones or disassemble them for recycled parts, depending upon the condition of the phone. We could receive ten cents to fifty dollars a phone. Any phone can be donated. I’ve gotten phones from the eighties, and we take them all.”
Chester Lapointe, the manager of T-Mobile, explained that phones customers trade in that are broken or unusable are scrapped for parts, and phones that work are just refurbished for the company to resale.
Some Keene State students don’t think about donating phones normally as illustrated by Cameron Thibodeau and Christopher Ansara, both sophomores. Both said, normally they would trade their phones in, or just store them away. “ I never really thought about donating old phones before,” Ansara stated. Both agreed, after hearing about the drive, they would donate their old phones after wiping their data themselves.
Phones can be dropped off up to October 31 at the counseling center, Rec Center, Zorn Dining Commons and across from the info desk at the Student Center.
Austin Cook can be contacted at
acook@kscequinox.com
