What would you do if your assignment was to come up with a plan to change the world?  It’s a tall order but one that young Trevor McKinney takes to heart in this dramatic tear-jerker based on the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Trevor decides to help create an Utopian Earth by selflessly helping three people.  In turn, these people need to help three more and so on.

Here’s how he describes it to his mother and teacher: “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 then turns on his calculator, punches in some numbers and says, “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?”

The movie chronicles the struggles that Trevor goes through to do something nice for the three people he has chosen.  While some people might have watched the movie and moved on, others have embraced the concept of paying it forward in real life.  For example, the Pay it Forward Foundation works with kids to teach them that they can indeed change the world and helps them do it.  There’s even a Pay it Forward Day on April 28th.

If you would like to pay it forward you can follow these tips provided by wikiHow:

1. Be attentive wherever you are for opportunities to help someone.  You can change people’s attitudes about the world through your unobtrusive acts of kindness.
2. Do something nice for someone you don’t know (or don’t know very well). It should be something significant, and not for a person from whom you expect a good deed — or anything at all, for that matter — in return.
3. Spread the word. If the person thanks you and wants to “repay” you (that is, pay it “back”), let them know that what you’d really like is for them to pay it “forward” — you’d like them to do something nice for three people they don’t know, and ask those three people to do something nice for three more people.
4. Pay it forward. When you notice that somebody has done something nice for you, make a note in your mind to practice three acts of kindness towards other people.

To watch the movie trailer go here.