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An inspiring new group of role models for "engaged retirement" is emerging. Unwilling to stuff envelopes or go off quietly to the sidelines, these change-makers are taking matters into their own hands and fashioning a new vision of the second half of life, one in which the expertise and talent of a lifetime is refocused on finding solutions to challenges in our communities, our country, and the world.
Marc Freedman, cofounder of Civic Ventures, tells the story of the creation of The Purpose Prize, which provides five awards of $100,000 and ten awards of $10,000 to people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges.
Founded in the late 1990s by social entrepreneurs John Gardner and Marc Freedman, Civic Ventures is reframing the debate about aging in America and redefining the second half of life as a source of social and individual renewal.
2006 prize winners come from all sectors. They are effective action-oriented innovators. Some are social entrepreneurs who have started new organizations; others are change-makers whose innovative approaches to leadership have transformed existing organizations, or grassroots activists playing a leadership role in improving communities or advancing a cause.
They are living proof that aging does not equal stagnation and decline, and that later life is a time of innovation, productivity, and creativity as rich as the younger years.
Marc Freedman is the founder and president of Civic Ventures, and cofounder of the Experience Corps. Formerly vice president of Public/PrivateVentures and a visiting Fellow of Kings College, University of London, he has served as an advisor to nonprofit groups including AARP, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, the Corporation for National Service, AgeConcern-England, and the YMCA of the USA, and corporations including Pillsbury and Leo Burnett Advertising. His recent book, Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, was an editor's recommendation of the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, hailed by The New York Times as an “inspiring, informative, mind-opening book,” and described by Business Week as “clearly written and full of ... likeable characters.” His earlier book, The Kindness of Strangers, was called “the definitive book on the (mentoring) movement” by the Los Angeles Times, and was recently reissued in paperback by Cambridge University Press.
Freedman, a frequent commentator in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on National Public Radio, has testified before numerous committees of the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament on topics including the aging of American society, youth development, and civic engagement. A high honors graduate of Swarthmore College with an MBA from Yale University, Freedman received the Ashoka fellowship, the Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy, the Archstone Award of the American Public Health Association, and the Maxwell Pollock Award of the Gerontological Society of America. He currently serves on the board of Generations United.
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