$2,500 scholarship opportunity for enterprising 20-something - spread the word

I hate to sound old and gushy, but what the heck.

I am so PROUD of my young mentor Ramit Sethi, co-founder of PB Wiki and blogger at www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com.  Note I said menTOR, not menTEE.  Ramit has taught me a lot of things in the couple of years I have known him, but his latest post about a $2,500 scholarship for an enterprising 20-something is really motivating.  Here is how he describes the impetus behind the scholarship:

"Earlier this week, I was reading an online discussion about what people would do if they were rich. People talked about traveling, starting a charity, and teaching…all GREAT causes. But why don’t we do it today? We don’t have to quit our jobs to travel — we can do it 4 Hour Workweek style. We can teach little kids by doing one-off seminars or tutoring or help inner-city women manage their finances or find local volunteering opportunities in our neighborhood.

You don’t have to quit your job and become a monk to give back. You don’t have to stop going out every weekend. We can be successful by going 85% of the way there.

My point is, we don’t need to wait for tomorrow.

If you want to give back, you can do it in a thousand ways.

It doesn’t have to be a scholarship. Never before in history have we been able to help so many people with so little. We have tools like Kiva and DonorsChoose and Youtube that allow us to scale our social entrepreneurship to millions of people. And with so many talented people reading this blog, I’m SURE I can find someone who’s the right fit to give back."

Scholarship details

"The I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation is a $2,500 one-time award for someone with an entrepreneurial background who has a specific plan for a socially innovative project. I’ll fund your idea for $2,500 and provide mentorship and introductions.

The key is that it must scale. Instead of helping one child (which is great by itself), I’m looking for someone who can take that interaction and apply it to 100, 1,000, or 10,000 people. For example, if you were really ambitious, you could fly to another country and donate your time. But if you wanted to make it scale, you could use your video skills videos like this or this. Or your teaching skills. Or your programming skills. How many more people would that affect? How could you measure it?"

The details and application are here.

In my opinion, mentoring from Ramit is worth twelve times the amount of the financial award.  He is truly a gifted teacher, manager, innovator and leader. Not to mention a very positive human being.

If you fit the target demographic and have a great idea, apply!  And if you know a young person anywhere in your life that might be eligible, please pass on the word.

As for the rest of us, let's take Ramit's example as a healthy kick in the pants to not wait for the mythical moment to make our goals come true. 

Comments

[Shailesh Ghimire]

Great post. I'm going to post this on some of the alum forums I belong to - who knows. It's always good to spread the word.

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Excellent! The more buzz we get the better! Perhaps it will inspire some other young entrepreneurs like Ramit to kick in their own scholarships. :)

All the best,

-Pam

[JibberJobber Guy]

20-somethings huh? I feel so old ;)

Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
Author - I'm on LinkedIn -- Now What???

[Sarah Cook]

What a great idea. I love how we can impact the world through technology, and we should make every effort to do so. It will be interesting to see what the winner comes up with.

On the flip side, don’t forget that simple human touch and love can be far reaching too. It removes barriers, expands our thinking, and challenges our sense of being and comfort. When we touch one person, it gives them the strength to touch many others.