Encore knows you’re going to change careers
At barely twenty years old, I was told by a Foundations of Education professor that on average, a person changes careers four to six times in a lifetime. Since I knew everything, like most twenty year olds do, I knew he wasn’t talking to me. I was going to be an English teacher. I was going to change the world one child at a time, and I like to think I did – for a period of about two years.
I then decided that the world would be better served if I had more power, so I began a Masters program and soon moved into education administration. I then married into the military seeing the world through an airman’s eyes, and as soon as we began our family (I mean as soon as the line turned pink), my only focus was babies, and I was pretty sure my world contribution would be my perfect children… now I know my world contribution is being a giant public spectacle as a mother so that other parents feel adequate in their child rearing endeavors. It hasn’t even been twenty years since that lecture and I am well ahead of the curve in career changes.
Encore helps those over sixty to achieve their second act
Encore.org, whose slogan is “Second Acts for the Greater Good,” has recognized that people change. We choose careers in our early twenties that serve who we are then, but we evolve. Our ideas get bigger, our material desires get smaller, and our hearts grow out of life experiences. Through jobs, families, and just plain maturity, we realize social needs greater than ourselves, and we change our focuses. We grow up.
Encore.org is aimed at helping people, specifically those over sixty, realize, aspire, and attain “encore careers.” It is a network of people, projects, encouragement, direction, opportunities, and ideas to help guide people into their after midlife endeavors. It is a chance for those with life experience to take what they’ve learned and give it back to the world. It isn’t retiring and volunteering. It is finding the heart’s direction and applying it to a social purpose career.
Certainly all careers, all business industries, all passions make the world turn, and there is pride in workforces and workers of all kinds, but as you find yourself on the other side of midlife ready to make a new kind of difference, CEO Marc Freedman wants to know, “What’s your encore?”
