Encore Careers: Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life
There are number of encore career pathways available to you as you
explore what's next after "retiring" from your current career. One of
the pathways that can be truly exciting is civic engagement.
I'm not talking about traditional volunteerism. I'm talking about what
Marc Freedman, author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the
Second Half of Life, describes as work that combines 1) making a
social impact, 2) finding personal meaning and, 3) earning continued
income in the second half of life. It's work that matters. It's social
entrepreneuring. It might surprise you to learn that that the 55-64 age
group is the most active in creating new ventures; people ages 20-34 are
the least entrepreneurial.
What kind of a social innovator might you be if you mixed your
creativity, experience and passion with a desire to do something bigger
than yourself?
For Elizabeth and Stephen Alderman, life as they'd known it irreversibly
changed when their youngest son was killed on 9/11. To honor his life,
Elizabeth and Stephen started the Peter C. Alderman Foundation to treat
the one billion victims of trauma and terrorism around the world by
creating homegrown mental health systems where violence (rape, war,
kidnapping) has laid waste to communities. Elizabeth (a special
education teacher) and Stephen (a doctor) have channeled their grief
into a beautiful legacy for their son.
Judith Broder was so moved by a play she saw depicting the trauma that
soldiers experience in war, she created The Soldiers Project. As a
psychiatrist, Broder knew that, without help, some soldiers would never
get past what they had seen and done, and how it affected not just their
lives, but the lives of their loved ones, too. Through The Soldiers
Project, Judith recruits mental health professionals who provide free,
confidential, unlimited therapy to service members and their families.
Psychologist Marcy Adelman knew first-hand that many LGBT (lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender) seniors looking for housing and care late in
life face discrimination and loneliness. She set out to provide
affordable, LGBT-friendly housing and training for service providers to
better support LGBT elderly. The success of her organization, Openhouse,
is reflected in the dramatic improvement of mainstream services
available to LGBT seniors in the San Francisco Bay area.
These four people have created extraordinary encore careers for
themselves, and they epitomize the spirit of social entrepreneurship.
Each has found the place where people are falling through the cracks in
their communities (and around the world), and they've built new models
for -- and creative new ways of -- serving.
Elizabeth, Stephen, Judith and Marcy are four of the 2009 winners of The
Purpose Prize, a program of the Encore Careers campaign which aims to
engage millions of baby boomers in encore careers to produce "a windfall
of human talent to solve society's greatest problems, from education to
the environment, health care to homelessness". For more information and
inspiration go to
www.encore.org.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Encore Career Coach
Coach Lin Schreiber, author of the popular ABC's of Revolutionizing
Retirement, helps self-reliant women reinvent themselves in the next
stage of life, formerly known as "retirement," by designing a new encore
life that includes a fulfilling
encore
career. To claim your free Encore Career Starter Kit,
visit her site at =====>
http://www.EncoreCareerStarterKit.com
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