Due to historical reasons, people in the Czech Republic lacked________. The area hit by a storm in Slovakia in 2004 was the Cze

When people say that I invented the Donor’s Message Service or DMS that raises money for charity, it’s easy to get the wrong idea. The texting technology was already there, it was just my idea to use it in the new way. Premium rate short messages service or text messaging is used for buying a ring tones or voting via text. My idea was to use the same tool to get Czechs to give money to charity. Because of some historical reasons, we didn’t have much of a charitable tradition here. But last year, through sending DMSs, Czechs donated about 920,000 pounds to dozens of different nonprofit groups. As far as I know, the Czech Republic is the only country in Europe where you can send a text message as a way of giving to charity. 7 years ago, when I was working at a non-profit organization concerned with corporate social responsibility, I attended a conference in Budapest on Africa. I wanted to visit a particular seminar, but it was full when I arrived, so I went into another room, not knowing the topic. It was a seminar on individual giving, and I almost left. At that time, there was almost no donating by individuals in my country. We in the non-profit sector have been focused on raising money from institutional foundations. But we had almost no experience with individual giving, and most of us thought it could never work here. As it turned out, in just one hour this seminar completely changed my thinking. The seminar leader, an American, asked us: "In the last two months, how many of you supported a charity? " Almost no one raised their hand. Then he asked why nobody had made a donation, no one had an answer. He turned a sheet on a flip chart. It showed that 85％ of people said they didn’t support a charity because they were never asked. This got me thinking of ways to make it really simple for Czechs to make donations. I wondered if we could collect donations via text messages, which is quick and easy and a new technology that young people will use. So I started to discuss this with the main wireless providers in the Czech Republic. They agreed to set up a single number to which people could send an SMS and make donations to a variety of charities, big and small. The mobile operators recognized it’s a win-win situation and agreed to take money only for operating costs. We set a very modest amount, 72 pence, which anyone can give. The program really took off in 2004, when a terrible storm hit the High Tatra mountains in Slovakia, which is a favorite holiday destination for Czechs. Trees were toppled everywhere, and Czechs really wanted to help. Some TV programs started putting out the name of a group that was doing recovery work, and explained how people could donate to them via DMS. Suddenly, people discovered the DMS, and in the end, the Czechs collected far more money than the Slovaks. When the program started, I guessed it would work if one million DMSs could be sent every year—that would mean one for every ten people in the Czech Republic. Last year, Czech sent 1.5 million DMSs, so it’s a big success. Now we’re talking with groups in other European countries about setting up similar programs. My formal education had been in teacher training, and in the 1990s, I got involved with groups that were working to modernize Czech schools and teaching methods. For a time, I worked at the Czech Education Ministry, where I was in charge of European Structural Funds. Over the past ten years, I’ve been overseeing people and budgets, and I realized they needed to get proper training in management, so last year I enrolled in an executive MBA program. One of the most satisfying moments for me was when a friend who had a pub told me about a group of men who had come in. They were sitting at their table and drinking beer and talking about their wives and football. All of a sudden, someone said: "Let’s go. We’ll have a cigarette and send some DMSs. " Five or six guys stood up and went outside and smoked their cigarettes, and then, just like in a hokey match, they did a countdown and hit "send" on their mobile phones all at once. They were sending the DMSs to help the victims of the Asian tsunami. I was really moved when I heard that story.