Three hundred soldiers from in and around the San Antonia area who have been wounded in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be in possession of specially adapted laptops to aid their recovery thanks to support from the San Antonia Area Foundation (SAAF) and Soldier’s Angels.
SAAF are an organisation set up to administer funds from individuals and organisations and donate these funds to worthy charitable causes that will significantly enhance the quality of life in the community.
Soldier’s Angels are a non profit organisation consisting of volunteers who provide support to men and women in the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air force and Coastguard as well as to veterans and their families.
The grant of $210,000 to buy the laptops came from SAAF’s fund Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment (TRIAD) and has been donated to Soldier’s Angels to fund Project Valour-IT.
Project Valour-IT was set up to provide laptop computers and other technology to wounded soldiers. The sort of technologies provided by the Project includes voice controlled laptops, Wii Video Game Systems and Personal GPS.
This means that wounded soldiers will be able to use the computers to aid their recovery, increase motivation and generally increase their quality of life.
They will be able to send emails, prepare themselves for work after they leave the military, and can use them for physical and occupational therapy. Whole body games systems such as Wii, for example, when used under the guidance of trained therapists have been found to increase motivation and speed up recovery times.
Those soldiers who have been severely injured will also benefit from specially fitted features such as voice control technology where they can speak into a microphone to communicate via the laptop enabling them to maintain connections with the rest of the world during and after their recovery.
Chuck Ziegenfuss, himself a wounded veteran and co creator of Valour-IT said about his experience of using a laptop with voice control technology “It was the first time I felt whole since I’d woken up wounded in Landstuhl.”
This is the 3rd grant from SAAF to Soldier’s Angels who have already donated 3,000 laptops to wounded soldiers across the country.
How do they decide who gets them? Soldier’s Angels work closely with staff at Brooke Army Medical Centre (BAMC), one of the largest facilities in America for treating wounded soldiers, so is an ideal centre point to identify worthy recipients for laptops under Project Valour-IT.
If you want to find out all the latest news on tech why not subscribe to our RSS feed?
Leave a Reply