Win $500 to Explore What the World Needs from You

I believe that it isn’t enough to know what you want to give to the world; if you want your life and your work to have real impact, you also need to know what the world needs from you. But when push comes to shove, how do you accurately identify the needs of others? And if you do happen to successfully identify those needs, how do you figure out what is needed from you, specifically? While we’re at it, how do you identify your own deep needs, which can sometimes be mysterious as those of others?

I could spend a lifetime asking, answering, and re-asking these questions, and likely, I will. At least I hope so. Because I have a strong suspicion that asking “What does the world need from me?” is more important than answering it. In my all-time favorite book, Letters to a Young Poet, the brilliant Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

At Echoing Green’s Work on Purpose program, we decided to collaborate with Hillel's Ask Big Questions and turn Rilke’s question exploration ethos into a challenge.

Tell us how you would spend $500 to live the question “What does the world need from you?” Would you attend a conference on an issue you care about such as poverty or injustice? Would buy a train ticket to a city you feel called to serve and interview people about their needs? Or perhaps you would go to a monastery and learn how monks live the question in their daily lives?

Then rally your friends and colleagues to give your submission a "thumbs up." The individual with the most thumbs-up will receive a $500 mini-grant to follow through on their submission. A second $500 mini-grant will be presented to an individual selected by a panel of judges from the top ten highly voted ideas. Go here to submit.