Older Do-Gooders Recognized With 'Purpose Prize'

By Joseph Shapiro

I liked the way a 74-year-old New York lawyer once described his older years: He told me he was in "the third half of his life." He retired but wanted to find purpose in this new phase of his life. So he ended up starting a legal services group that was providing important help to kids with disabilities.

Purpose Prize winner Tim Will brought broadband to Appalachia. (Encore Careers)

The Purpose Prize recognizes similar people, 60 or older, who have found new purpose in the third half of life by tackling social problems. Sponsored by the nonprofit think tank Civic Ventures, the prizes have become a kind of MacArthur "genius award" for retirees. This year's prizes -- which range from $50,000 to $100,000 -- were announced this week.

Tim Will, 61, was one of this year's 11 winners. The retired teacher moved to a rural North Carolina town and was surprised to see how cut off his new community was from basic Internet service. He helped get a grant to pay for 100 miles of fiber-optic cable that brought broadband service to Rutherford County, including its schools, police and fire departments. Then he started Farmers Fresh Market. It uses that Internet connection to let local farmers sell their heirloom tomatoes and kudzu blossom jelly direct to consumers and Charlotte restaurants. With that, farmers found new markets and urban dwellers got locally grown food.

More Winners After The Jump

Don Coyhis, 66, a computer executive from Colorado Springs, Colo., won for his start-up, called Wellbriety, a substance abuse recovery program geared to Native Americans. Coyhis, who grew up on a Mohican reservation in Wisconsin, says he felt isolated from traditional support groups and wanted to start something that reflected Native American values.

Connie Siskowski, 63 of Boca Raton, Fl., created a support group for kids who find themselves becoming caregivers for a parent with multiple sclerosis or for an elderly relative. She understands how hard it is to be a caregiver and get homework done; when she was a pre-teen, it had fallen to her to coordinate her grandfather's medication and care.

Marc Freedman, who runs Civic Ventures, says older people are the new "social entrepreneurs." They use their years of education and work experience to -- in retirement -- tackle social issues. Freedman told the story of some of these social entrepreneurs in his 2007 book, Encore: Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.

In an NPR story in 2006, the year of the first Purpose Prize awards, Freedman said these older social enterpreneurs "might end up redefining retirement as we know it."

Freedman says many retirees today were marked by the 1960s and believe in the possibility of social change. "I think this is a group which may well have a second wave of activism, this time tempered by experience. But I think, if we play our cards right, create the kinds of opportunities that could capture their imagination, make them once again feel they were making a difference, that they were part of something larger, we might not be able to build enough public service opportunities for this group, the demand will be so great."

That 2006 NPR piece told the story of one of the first winners: Martha Rollins. She ran an antique store in Richmond, Va., and then opened a second one where she hired people coming out of prison looking for work. Rollins called it her "Robin Hood idea." She would sell to the rich and give job training to the poorest of the poor. Today, her store Boaz and Ruth is thriving and has expanded to include a catering and moving business.