The "Pay It Forward" Challenge

START A REVOLUTION—IT BEGINS WITH YOU!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to join me in THE “PAY IT FORWARD” CHALLENGE. 

WHAT IS PAY IT FORWARD?

Pay It Forward is not only a book that also became a movie, but it's also an idea. It's an action plan within a work of fiction. But does it have to be fiction? We're hoping not. In fact, since the book was released in January of 2000, a real-life social movement has emerged, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. What began as a work of fiction has already become much more.

The teacher protagonist of the book and/or movie Pay It Forward, starts a movement with this voluntary, extra-credit assignment: THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION.

Trevor, the 12-year-old hero of Pay It Forward, thinks of quite an idea. He describes it to his mother and teacher this way: "You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven." He turned on the calculator, punched in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To eighty-one. Then two hundred forty-three. Then seven hundred twenty-nine. Then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?"

Impossible?  I think not!

The premise of the novel and/or movie, Pay It Forward, is one that any person can implement in his or her own life, at any time. 

It begins with doing a favor for another person—without any expectation of being paid back. Indeed one would request that the recipient of that favor do the same for someone else: ideally for three other people. The unconditional favors can be large or small. As Trevor observes: it doesn't have to be a big thing. It can just seem that way, depending on whom you do it for.

Join me in this mission and let’s see for ourselves that it can actually be done, as it had already been done in other countries.

Do a favor that really helps someone and tell him or her not to pay it back, but to pay it forward to three other people who, in turn, each pay it forward to three more—and on and on into a global outpouring of kindness, decency, and favors.

(To get a more graphic idea of what I mean, watch “Pay It Forward”—the movie, or read the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde.)