Group Helps Military Personnel Communicate Via E-MailGroup Helps Military Personnel Communicate Via E-Mail

U.S. soldiers stationed around the world are increasingly turning to E-mail as a way to communicate with the loved ones they've left behind. But some families don't have a PC and are unable to receive or send those important messages. Operation Homelink, a volunteer organization, is working to bridge that gap.

Operation Homelink has delivered 20 PCs to families of junior enlisted military personnel with a rank of E1 to E5 who are stationed outside the United States. Often, these families either don't own a PC or don't have one modern enough or powerful enough to support Internet access, says Operation Homelink president and founder Dan Shannon.

Shannon created Operation Homelink after hearing about a volunteer organization created in Tampa, Fla., by a group of military wives to help families with a mother or father in the military. Operation Homelink's partner in the effort is Redemtech Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Micro Electronics Inc. that specializes in technology recycling. Redemtech has agreed to donate 100 PCs to the cause.

One of the PCs was delivered to the wife of Petty Officer Third Class Lindel Lair, who is with the U.S. Naval Reserve Force. Now Lair can trade E-mails with his family from his post at the U.S. Naval Station in Rota, Spain, where he's working as a member of the Seabees, the Navy's corps of construction engineers. "Thank you for your outstanding work and dedication to the service members abroad," Lair wrote in an E-mail to Shannon. "It is people like yourselves that we cherish and defend our country for!"

Shannon and Redemtech are beginning to solicit large companies for donations of additional PCs, which must have a minimum of a 233-MHz Pentium II processor, 32 Mbytes of RAM, 500 Mbytes of hard-drive space, and a 14-inch VGA monitor. "Most likely, these computers are really not being used for anything or would end up in a landfill," Shannon says.

Redemtech will refurbish the donated PCs and install Microsoft Windows 98 and software for Internet connectivity, says Jill Vaske, Redemtech's VP of sales and marketing. Most recipients of the PCs can get E-mail access through NetZero, MSN, or AOL Internet services.