We are providing web hosting services for educational institutions and entities at no cost:
https://www.icdsoft.com/en/education
The event described below drew our attention to this common truth about education and all its beauty:
A few months ago, I saw on the news that my old high school was asking for donations. I used to donate to my school, so this public appeal captured my full attention. The message relayed that The America for Bulgaria Foundation was going to build an innovative center for high achievement in natural science and ecology, and would donate $85,000 out of the $114,000 needed to complete the project.
I had believed that I had been the biggest donor to my school... until then. I immediately called the school to ask how much of the remaining $29,000 had been collected. They told me that they had managed to collect $6,000 so far. I wired the remaining $23,000 to them the same day.
The case was closed, but I found myself thinking every day about America's donation to my school. Bulgaria is definitely not a third-world country, and our government can afford to take care of our schools, though it could do so better by tackling corruption and the grey economy. Nonetheless, the level of our educational system is not too shabby; in fact, I’d venture to say it’s overall pretty great. It made me wonder if perhaps there were schools in the United States that could have used that financial help just as much, if not more…
As citizen and taxpayer, I can imagine how the average American would react should they learn that the US government (USAID) has been pouring money into schools in Europe since 1989, as well as everywhere outside the US. Is that a waste of money? Maybe not, because it made me think everyday of how to return this kind gesture. Luckily, I own a business with a great reputation in the US, which gives me the means to actually make a positive impact. It’s a web hosting company with hundreds of servers in Boston, serving over 40,000 American companies, organizations, and individuals since 2001. And guess who also needs high-quality web hosting? Schools and universities.
I gave my team the task to find out how many of our current American customers are schools and universities, and the number was not surprising: we provide service to over 250 schools in the US. The second order to my team was to refund every penny paid to ICDSoft by these American schools. And the third order was to modify our system in such a way that would allow any school and university across the US to get web hosting service from us for free.
Within one hour, we had a special page for this purpose:
https://www.icdsoft.com/en/education
At the moment, I am not rich enough to return the $20 million that America for Bulgaria is pouring into our country each year, but I can return the $85,000 as a gesture to the American people with interest. And I’d feel honored to treat American students the same way America treats Bulgarian students.
I do believe that everything we do, good or bad, comes back to us sooner or later, like a karmic boomerang. So that alone is an argument for doing good deeds only, though the truth is that the act of doing good deeds without any concern for future results is a fulfilling gift in itself. When one person in the Western hemisphere plants a tree, people in the Eastern hemisphere will breathe the oxygen from it, too; and vice versa. This rule of thumb applies to the talent we plant as well; the $5 you donated years ago to a random student abroad may come back to you in decades, in the form of a new medication, right at the moment when you need it.
The great novelist Dostoevsky once said, “Beauty will save the world.” I can't imagine anything more beautiful than the human intellect, so the United States of America deserve applause and much more for helping schools across the globe. Someday we will all be living in a perfect world, and you, my American friends, will have the honor of saying, “It all started here!”
Good deeds are what made America great. Keep it up!
Dimitar Dimitrov
CEO, ICDSoft.com