The “golden years” dream was freedom from work; now that we are living longer, healthier lives, the new dream is freedom to work. The goal today for many is doing what you love, helping others and getting paid for it.
Civic Ventures, a national think tank on boomers’ work and social purpose was founded by Marc Freedman, a leading voice about the changing face of retirement. In 2005, Civic Ventures created an annual prize for people in encore careers to showcase the value of experience and dispute the notion that innovation is the sole province of the young.
Ten people, older than 60 will win this year’s Purpose Prize on Wednesday and receive up to $100,000 each. The 2007 winner, Dr. Donald Berwick, was later appointed by President Barack Obama to be administrator of the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.
Berwick, a pediatrician with a master’s in public policy, launched a campaign to improve hospital safety and save lives by implementing six specific improvements in care, including ones to reduce medication errors and infections. In 18 months, 3,100 hospitals joined the effort and reduced deaths by 120,000 over the previous year.
In stark contrast, one of the 2008 winners, Catalino Tapia, was 20 years old when he came to America with a sixth-grade education and $6 in his pocket. He worked at many different jobs, but eventually became skilled at gardening and was sought after by affluent clients.
When he realized one of his dreams with son Noel graduating from law school, Catalino decided to help children of poor gardeners go to college, and with the help of seed money from some of his wealthy clients, he started a foundation to provide college scholarships.
The stories of past winners of the Purpose Prize on the Civic Ventures, seen at www.encore.org, are as amazing as they are inspirational.
One of the reasons it is so important to highlight the contributions seniors can make to society is there has been a growing national conversation about whether to make investments in children vs. expenditures for the elderly.
Obviously, since life expectancy will continue to increase, it no longer makes sense to spend the last third of our lives on a subsidized vacation. Encore careers encourage those in their 60s and 70s to trade money for meaning and become the backbone in fields such as education, healthcare, government and nonprofits.
Social Security can then support the truly dependent who retire on disability. Forty colleges in America have received grants to implement programs to help seniors re-career and prepare for encore careers in the fields mentioned above.
An excellent television program, “Open Mind,” airing at noon Saturdays on WNET-13, is currently discussing the MacArthur Foundation Research on an Aging Society and what we will have to do to accommodate an aging population.
A recent show discussed the trans-generational effects of the Experience Corps program in which senior volunteers have served as mentors to underprivileged children in more than 200 schools. Not only did the youngsters in grades K-3 improve dramatically with the additional attention and help, scientific studies of the seniors involved showed better health, improved memory and reasoning power as well as emotional well being.
The lesson, then, is not to pit one generation against the other, but to make investments across life’s course so that we all may benefit. Author Robert Hill adopts the perspective that positive aging doesn’t just happen; it is our actions and our intentional behaviors that affect the quality of our lives. What is known is that two of the most important features are:
-Close, long-lasting, meaningful relationships
-Engagement in purposeful activities that have meaning to us
If you are interested in reading the stories of some of the risk takers, idealists and innovators who are changing lives, starting with their own, or if you want information on a possible encore career for yourself, visit http://www.encore.org/.
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