2021 Leave Your Mark Winners Update

As IMG’s 6^th annual Leave Your Mark contest kicks off for 2022, the 2021 contest winners are excited to share how they put their winnings to use throughout the year to further their global outreach efforts.

IMG’s Leave Your Mark contest is an annual contest where mission and social good organizations around the world enter to win prize money by answering the question: How is your organization working to overcome the current obstacles impacting the world? If your organization were to win, how would your winnings support your continued global outreach efforts? Submissions are judged and scored, and IMG awards the top-scoring organizations with money to invest toward their global outreach programs.

Make a Miracle

Make a Miracle is one of the winning organizations from 2021 and supports the community of San Juan de Lurigancho (SJL), the largest and most impoverished district of Lima, Peru. Make a Miracle helps the SJL community by building houses for families in need, hosting community soup kitchens, providing medical care, and more. When they entered the essay contest in 2021, Make a Miracle had hopes of using the contest winnings to fully stock their new Wellness Center.

Make a Miracle’s President, Carolyn Canouse, said they were blown away when they first learned the organization was one of the 2021 Leave Your Mark winners. With their $5,000 winnings, Make a Miracle says they were able to purchase everything they needed to stock their new Wellness Center including tables, chairs, veterinary supplies, dental equipment, books, and much more.

Canouse says the average household income per month in the SJL community is $192. Since Make a Miracle opened its new Wellness Center in the fall of 2021, it has been used daily through hosting clinics, workshops, and kid’s clubs to help make a difference in the hill communities in San Juan de Lurigancho.

Real Impact Missions

The second 2021 winning organization, Real Impact Missions, mobilizes medical mission trips throughout Central America and the Caribbean in areas with little to no access to healthcare. Each summer, Real Impact Missions sends a team of doctors, nurses, and volunteers to areas in need to conduct mobile medical clinics. The team’s goal each year is to address both the physical and spiritual needs of the estimated 250 patients they see daily at the clinic.

Real Impact Missions says their medical mission trip in 2022 is to the Dominican Republic. The $5,000 they won from the Leave Your Mark contest will be used to purchase the prescription medication needed to take along on their trip. Because they serve communities that have little to no access to proper healthcare, they are grateful to have the $5,000 as a considerable way to cover the cost of the medications that residents in these communities critically need to stay healthy.

2022 Leave Your Mark Contest

For the first time, IMG is excited to be accepting both written essay and video submissions for the 2022 Leave Your Mark contest. Essay submissions should be approximately 500 words, and video submissions should be approximately 3 minutes in length. Another exciting update to the 2022 contest is that IMG will be awarding prizes to three winning organizations — with first, second, and third place prizes awarded in the amounts of $5,000, $3,000, and $2,000.

IMG has insured mission and social good organizations since the early 1990s, providing key benefits and assistance services for thousands of members who travel or live internationally with the purpose of serving others. The company launched its Leave Your Mark essay contest on June 1, 2017, as a way to give back to organizations serving charitable missions. To learn more about the contest or to enter the 2022 contest for a chance to win, please visit the Leave Your Mark Contest page.