Read the full transcript of Danny Rodriguez’s talk titled “Find Your Drop: A Roadmap to Purpose” at TEDxColumbusHS 2024 conference. Danny Rodriguez is co-founder and CEO of BLUE Missions, a non- profit organization that empowers the youth to advocate for a world where there is water for all.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Finding Your Purpose: A Road Trip to Your Drop
DANNY RODRIGUEZ: It’s very easy for people to say, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” or “Go find your purpose.” But how do we actually find our purpose? How do we navigate towards our purpose while dealing with the responsibilities and pressure from our everyday life? I see this journey as a road trip.
Most people have a love-hate relationship with road trips. On one hand, driving is one of the slowest ways to travel, and you have to do all of the work. Things like trip planning and packing always seem to take longer than expected. Throw a couple of toddlers in the back seat, and that might be nightmare fuel for some of you.
By a show of hands, how many of you get anxious thinking about the idea of a long road trip? It’s hard for me to relate. Road tripping is our family’s favorite way to explore. When we’re on a road trip, we’re in control.
We decide where we will go, when we will leave, and the stops we will make throughout our journey. If something catches our eye along the way, we have the freedom to pivot at a moment’s notice. And if we don’t like a particular place, we could just pack up and go. Our favorite part is when we find a place that captures our heart, because we’re free to extend our stay at any time.
For those of you that raise your hand, buckle up, because tonight we’re all going on a road trip, and we’ll be traveling to find your drop. Everyone will receive the same directions, but you will each end up at a unique destination. The destination is your drop, and your drop is essentially your purpose. It’s located at the intersection of your talents, your passions, and an opportunity to make an impact.
The journey to finding your drop won’t always go as planned, so be on the lookout for wrong turns and dead ends. Sometimes you’ll even have to reroute, but that’s okay. Let’s get this show on the road.
The Driver’s License: Life’s Basic Needs
First and foremost, you’ll need your driver’s license. Without one, we’re stuck in park. Our driver’s license represents life’s most basic needs. Those can be defined as food, shelter, and water. For the sake of our journey, let’s take a closer look at the water crisis.
Over 703 million people around the world live without clean water, and when you don’t have access to clean water, you don’t have a choice but to seek it out, even if it’s dirty. Women and children bear this responsibility for their families. They pick up their buckets and walk back and forth, collecting water until they have enough to cook, clean, drink, and bathe. Every minute that a child is walking to collect water is a minute that they could have been in school.
This is why water is the foundation of every community, and it’s impossible to break the cycle of poverty without it. Water changes everything. Most importantly, it empowers locals and puts them on a level playing field, which ultimately gives them the opportunity to pursue their dreams and find their purpose. And while a driver’s license is an attainable achievement in our community, that is not the case for billions of people around the world.
If everyone is going to find their drop, we must work towards a world where everyone has life’s most basic needs.
Starting Your Engine: Becoming Aware
Now that you passed your driver’s test, it’s time to start your engine. Seeking out your purpose requires you to become aware of different issues and injustices that exist today. This learning happens through our daily interactions with the world.
This education starts in the home, starts through the values and morals instilled in us by our families, and continues on in the classroom as we learn from our teachers, friends, and mentors. I’m sure we can all think about someone from our past who has significantly impacted who we have become. Other times it happens when you least expect it. Maybe you saw a documentary that opened your eyes, or maybe someone you care about is forced to battle a disease, and it inspires you to take action.
The bottom line is that we can’t care about something if we don’t know it exists. As you begin your journey, make sure to keep your eyes, ears, and heart open to opportunities for learning.
Pressing the Accelerator: Taking Action
And once your engine is warm, it’s time to press the accelerator. When you learn about a cause that stirs up your curiosity, the next step is to take action. But what does that mean? Where do we even begin? You start in the service of others.
Begin by researching organizations addressing your particular cause. And when you find one that speaks to you, reach out and ask them how you can get involved. You can use your unique talents to serve, or you can build new skills and jump into action. No act of service is too big or too small if it comes from a place of love. There are an infinite number of ways to serve.
Consider what you have to offer, whether it be your time, talents, or treasure. And if at any point you come to the realization that this may not be getting you closer to your drop, hop back on the road and move on to your next destination.
Early on in your journey, you should pull over whenever something captures your attention and explore it further. When you get to know the stakeholders, learn about the solutions, and immerse yourself into action, that’s like getting on the express lane.
Pressing the accelerator helps you realize the power that you have to make an impact, and that inspires you to keep going.
My Personal Journey
I was 16 years old when I first pressed that accelerator.
That’s when I participated on my first water project in the community of La Sabina in the Dominican Republic. I only went because I needed the service hours for school, and I figured that this would be a cool topic for my college applications.
But despite going for all of the wrong reasons, the experience impacted me in all of the right ways. It stayed on my mind when I got back home. I couldn’t unsee what I saw. How could people be living this way?
And when I look back at this experience now, it’s easy to identify it as a key inflection point on the journey to my drop. I spent 10 days mixing cement, digging trenches, and taking bucket showers. I met kids my age dealing with the water crisis, and learned about their dreams and aspirations. I saw an entire community come together to solve an issue that was centuries old.
I’ll never forget the moment that the water shot out through the pipe. The entire community was gathered, and the children immediately ran under that pipe to dance and play. And as I looked around, I saw the elders in the community crying tears of joy, because they knew that their grandchildren would never have to walk for water the same way they did. It’s hard to put into words what I felt in that moment.
It’s a feeling that’s been described as the “campo magic” by so many volunteers who have experienced the same thing. That moment sparked a fire inside of me. It made me want to learn more about this issue, and find other ways that I can give back. I returned as a volunteer the following two summers, before co-founding Blue Missions with my sister in 2010.
Our goal was to help one community overcome the water crisis each year, while sharing this experience with anyone that wanted to join.
Refueling: The Importance of Reflection
It’s great that we’re making progress on this journey, but we can’t ignore the gas light when it turns on. Reflection is the fuel that allows us to pause and think about what we’ve learned, how we’ve made an impact, and how that makes us feel. Stopping to fill up your tank is also a great opportunity to pull out your GPS and see if there’s a more efficient route to your destination.
This exercise of zooming out and looking at the big picture is a critical step on the journey to find your drop. This is most effective after encountering an inflection point, but your gas light can turn on at any time. And like your gas light, your heart will tell you when it’s time to reflect. For some, this could happen when you’re thinking about what you should major in in college, while for others, it might manifest itself through an idea or a repetitive thought that you can’t shake.
The key is to practice identifying these moments as they show up in your life. We must disconnect from the distractions that surround us in order to reconnect with what is truly important. This is why we have to make self-reflection a priority and block off the necessary time to listen to what our hearts are telling us. It is in these moments that you put pen to paper and start mapping out the next leg of your journey.
The Evolution of Your Drop
I’ve always felt so lucky to have found my drop at such a young age, but the honest truth is that our drop evolves over time. When I graduated from college, I accepted an internship in the Dominican Republic to further build my knowledge and capacity in international development. This eight-month experience was a crash course on the daily struggles that these communities face and the systemic issues that cause them. I built incredible relationships, both professionally and personally, that I will cherish forever.
I didn’t know it then, but I was laying the foundation for what was to come. The ending of my time abroad coincided with Blue’s Dirt Project, benefiting the community of Carrasco. Carrasco was different than anywhere we had ever worked before. This community was facing extreme poverty.
Only 35 families lived here, and they lived in makeshift structures with dirt floors and banana leaves for walls. And the nearby river where they would collect their water was filled with contaminants. We came across many children in this community who had visible impacts from consuming this dirty water. But despite being a small community, it was filled with children.
We needed those children, because that project wouldn’t have gotten done without them. Fioleni was the leader of the Carrasco crew, as we would call them. She would lead her friends as they worked alongside our volunteers, doing whatever needed to be done. They hiked 10 kilometers to the source and glued hundreds of pipes.
They even joined us at the river after our long workdays to play. They wanted to spend every minute with our group. At the end of the trip, our mission was accomplished. Water arrived the night before our departure, and a celebration ensued.
And on the last day, before we got on the bus, Fioleni stopped me. She gave me a hug, and she said, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity of pursuing my dream of becoming a lawyer.” I couldn’t believe that she said that. At just 10 years old, Fioleni understood the magnitude of this project, because she knew what it meant to carry the weight of the water crisis.
That moment didn’t just change the trajectory of her life, it changed mine. She helped me realize that my drop was evolving, and Blue was being called to be much more than just a hobby. I was able to identify this inflection point and spent the next few days reflecting on what had happened. I understood that as a recent college graduate, real responsibility was right around the corner.
How was I supposed to earn a living? How was I supposed to balance the fire that I felt inside of me with the reality of the world around me? After coming up with a plan, I spoke with my parents and explained to them that I wanted to spend the next year of my life working pro bono for Blue Missions. I asked them if I can move back in with them to keep my expenses down and go after this dream.
Like most parents, they were concerned about how I was going to make a living long term, but ultimately, they knew that what I wanted to do was coming from a place of purpose. They not only accepted my request, but empowered me to go after this dream.
The Continuous Service Cycle
The service cycle never ends, and neither does the search for our drop. When you learn, you find ways to serve, and when you find ways to serve, you make an impact. And when you make an impact, it inspires you to keep going, and it inspires others to enter the service cycle themselves.
There’s no better example of this than Violeni. The end of the water project represented a new beginning for her. She finally had her driver’s license and was ready to start her engine. And when she turned 18, she asked me if she could volunteer with Blue to help other communities overcome the water crisis.
Fast forward to today, and she’s in her final year of law school on a full ride at one of the best universities in the Dominican Republic. Last year, I had the opportunity to spend a few days with Violeni, and we were reflecting on her journey. One of the things she said to me was, “I was born to serve others. The two most important rights for a person are peace and dignity. I will keep going after my dream so that children in communities like mine can see that anything is possible.”
Little did we know that that moment that we shared in 2012 would forever link us. And as for Blue, the ripple effect of that moment has led to over 230 infrastructure projects benefiting over 40,000 people through clean water and sanitation.
Nearly 5,000 volunteers from our own community have participated in these projects and entered the service cycle. They’ve begun their journey to find their drop. It also led to the birth of our U.S. Programs Division, also known as REACH. REACH works with youth to help them understand the worth of water, the urgent need to protect it, and the power that each of us has to make an impact. REACH stands for Reflection, Education, and Action to Connect Humanity. Inspiring others to find their drop is at the core of everything that we do.
Imagining a World of Purpose
I want you to imagine a world where we all step into the service cycle and find our drop. A world where schools introduce this framework to students at a young age and provide them with opportunities to reflect, learn, and serve. A world where every company has a purpose and gives back to the causes that they believe in. A world where parents encourage their children to go after their dreams and explore their talents and passions.
And although it may be easier to start this road trip before life gets complicated, you can’t let that scare you away from beginning your journey because your drop is just as important for you as it is for the people and causes that you will impact. We all have a role to play in the ecosystem of giving. Some people are called to become missionaries and move across the world, while others might find their drop in being the best possible parent they could be to their child. Some of you may be called to leverage your resources and help scale the impact of organizations that you believe in.
The possibilities are endless, but you are the only person that can lead this road trip. Over the next few days, I encourage you all to take some time to stop and refuel your tanks. Reflect on your journey, and when you’re ready, start your engine, press the accelerator, and don’t forget to keep your eye on the gas light. Thank you.
