Tag Archives: second acts

Congratulations Purpose Prize Winners!

Congratulations to the 2013 Purpose Prize Winners! The seven inspirational purpose prize winners this year each demonstrate how they use their wisdom and experience to make a difference in the lives of others. Health, veteran support, and parenting behind bars are some of passions of these inspirational elders. They are role models for us all.

Marika and Howard Stone, founders of 2Young2Retire, are past winners of the Purpose Prize. We appreciate the service of all of the purpose prize winners and the many other elders who are Too Young To Retire® and are focused on improving their communities and the world. For more information on this year’s winners, visit: http://www.encore.org/prize/meet-2013-purpose-prize

…and the Purpose Prize Winners Are

  • Judith Broder, a psychiatrist who now enlists therapists to provide free counseling to returning veterans and their families
  • Timothy Will, a former telecom executive who brings broadband – and profits – to economically distressed farm communities in Appalachia
  • Henry Lui, a professor who now turns toxic waste into safe, “green” bricks

broderHenry LiuTimothy Will

Five Purpose Prize winners have won $100,000 each. Five more won $50,000 each.  And 49 were named Purpose Prize fellows.  What distinguishes the Purpose Prize from others is that it not only honors past achievements, but it provides the funds and recognition for winners and fellows to continue their groundbreaking work.

Retirement?  Not for these folks.  They are just getting started on Encore Careers that will make the world a better place.  Read about their big ideas.

50+? The Peace Corps Wants You

“Do people tell you you`re over the hill? … What if you were?  Over the hill, over a stream and over an ocean.  To another continent.  Thousands of miles from your own. Where elders are looked to as leaders …”

If you’re over 50 and have ever been attracted to becoming a Peace Corps volunteer, this advertising message should alert you to the fact that the Peace Corps is recruiting older adults, for their maturity, life and business experience, and transferable skills.  Of the approximately 7,800 volunteers around the world, people 50 and older make up 5%, or fewer than 400.  Host nations are asking for volunteers who can offer real-world experience in technical fields, business development, agribusiness or teaching, rather than young adults right out of college, says Rosie Mauk, the Peace Corps’ associate director of volunteer recruitment and selection.  Applications among older Americans, many of whom have lost jobs in last year’s economic downturn, are on the rise.

2young2retire facilitator and Peace Corps volunteer, Patrice Koerper, who recently returned from an assignment in Macedonia, describes it as the “most amazing, rewarding adventure of my life,”  and the Peace Corps itself as the best organization she has ever been associated with.  A seasoned public relations professional with a “great job,” Patrice was looking for a change of direction.  She had three personal goals for her next endeavor:  first, she wanted “to see the faces of the people I was helping”; second, she wanted to get to know more people; and third, she wanted to live in Eastern Europe from where her family immigrated generations ago.  Service with the Peace Corps in Macedonia met all three.

In 2006, while exploring new possibilities for work and life, she took the training to become a certified 2young2retire facilitator.  She also found herself drawn to the Peace Corps and decided to apply.  After a six-month application process which she found both “laborious and scary,” she felt the Peace Corps knew more about her than anyone.  If you’re an older volunteer, you should expect that because there is so much more to know.

Based on an assessment of your skills and experience, the Peace Corps decides what kind of work you will take on.   Once you have accepted an assignment – you are offered up to three locations – you receive language and other training to prepare you for life in your host country.  The mission of the Peace Corps is captured in these three goals:

  1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
  2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
  3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

The Three Goals, plus the commitment to a 27-month duration of service, tend to screen out all but the most serious applicants.  Peace Corps volunteer are supplied with a round trip ticket, housing allowance and a stipend to cover food, transportation and incidentals.  For Patrice this came to $220 a month, or roughly equivalent to 250 Euros, an average salary in Macedonia.  The point is, volunteers must live like the locals.  She received full medical coverage during her service and affordable health insurance for up to 18 months following service.   Older volunteers who draw Social Security and/or other pension benefits, may accumulate significant savings while they are away from home.  All returning Peace Corps volunteers are awarded just over $6,000 toward a smooth transition to life back home, and Patrice notes, they are eligible for Response Corps, short-term, high-impact assignments that typically range from three months to a year, at the request of a country.

Eager to begin her new assignment, Patrice arrived in Macedonia and spent the first six months “doing nothing.  Patience is the Number One way to survive,” she notes.  Macedonia, which became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991, is in the process of reinventing itself and its economy.  She was assigned to work with a government agency and eventually found herself doing workshops on change.  At first, people tended to view volunteers with suspicion, perhaps because there has been no formal tradition of volunteering.  She grew comfortable with the experience of “living minute to minute.” The last seven months of her service in Macedonia proved to be the most fruitful and rewarding.   “I realized I was in the business of building hope and trust,” Patrice says.  She kept the motto of Macedonian native, Mother Theresa, in mind: “Do small things with great love.”

Here are links about the Peace Corps, including recent budgetary debate and how to go about applying:

Recruiting the 50+
Budget Debates, Future Prospects
From Job Loss to Peace Corps
About Peace Corps
Forum for Volunteers
How to Apply


Paradigm Shift?

You know something is changing in the culture when you start to see full page ads with words and images that deliver a new message. When I was contemplating a next career as a yoga instructor 10 years ago, it still seemed a rather esoteric, out there endeavor. Today, Yoga Journal is fat with advertising for retreats, schools, yoga products of every description. Moreover, images of toned people striking yoga poses or sitting in smiling meditation are commonplace in mainstream media.

With this in mind, I have to mention a full page ad that appeared in PLAY, a magazine section of last Sunday’s New York Times, that is emblematic of the zeitgeist as regards older people and the choice of meaningful second acts. The ad is for a new partnership between the Times and Monster.com, the career site. The headline copy is: FIND A JOB YOU’D DO FOR FREE…THEN LET THEM PAY YOU. “When you do what you love to do,” continues the body text, “it’s not really work at all. Now you can find the job you love, when you love to live. Your calling is calling — find it at nytimes.com/monster.” Good enough (and I love the idea of a job one loves), but the image should resonate with all of us 50 and beyond. It shows a mature male face, a hand holding a piece of chalk at a blackboard, the suggestion of a classroom. A teacher who loves his job?

As it happens, teaching is, like nursing and nurse-training, a profession where there are more jobs than people to fill them. These are also jobs where maturity and life experience give one an unusual advantage, and where we can exercise the ‘give back’ desire than grows stronger as we pass midlife and begin seeking our life’s work. Our calling, which we may have ignored to attend to the business of building a career and family, calls more loudly and clearly. How each of us answers can shape the rest of our lives. If enough of us in later life choose work that makes a positive impact on society, we can shift the paradigm*.

*Once used only in the scientific context, “paradigm shift” has found uses in other contexts, representing the notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing (Source: Wikipedia)