We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

In its upcoming April 11 issue, Forbes magazine focuses on boomers “Writing New Chapters.”

Journalist and author Kerry Hannon introduces us to people who abandoned “the retirement fantasy of gardening, golfing and lounging on the beach” in favor of meaningful work.

She writes: “Yes, some retirees have always taken part-time jobs out of boredom or financial need. What’s different now is that baby boomers are approaching work not as an afterthought but as a pillar of their `retirement’ plans.”

Like Cheryl Champagne. A finance manager for 25 years, at age 60 she took an early retirement buyout package from Hartford Life Insurance Co. in 2009. With 18 months of severance pay, and an employed husband, she had time to figure out what she wanted to do. She wanted to work, in a different way – in an encore career that allowed her to help others.

After a fellowship at Encore!Hartford, a workforce development program that helps experienced corporate and public-service professionals transition to nonprofits, Champagne became a fiscal analyst at Key Human Services, a nonprofit that serves people with mental disabilities. Champagne says, “I feel I’ve lived my life with blinders on, never interacting [with] or encountering the extreme need and poverty around me.”

Civic Ventures founder and CEO Marc Freedman, tells Hannon that people in Champagne’s stage in life might have another 15 years of work ahead.

“That changes the entire equation about what you want to do, what’s possible to do and whether it is worth investing up front for additional education,” he says. “Under the mantle of this hybrid notion of being working retired, people are crafting a stage of work that’s becoming something substantial – its own chapter.”

Freedman examines that phenomenon his upcoming book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, which Hannon recommends in a Forbes.com blog post that complements the magazine’s retirement coverage (“From Here to Retirement: Great Career Resources for Boomers”). She also cites Encore.org as a place to turn for comprehensive information about transitioning into an encore career.

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