Posted 03/06/2009 - 11:12:12am by Earon Davis in Promoting Encore Careers in the Media

I find it striking that most of us live out our lives working in organizations, whether corporate, nonprofit, educational or governmental, that are structured around basic ideas that have been around forever. Yet, we are aware of the desperate need for fine-tuning and applying our ideals and values in order to support relevant and helpful changes to create a better, more humane and sustainable, present and future.

In dealing with the media, I believe that one of the great strengths of encore careers is in people breaking beyond the conventional organizations, approaches and perspectives already empowered in our culture - people being inspired to put their own twist on conventional ideas that just are not working well - or to create new organizations to highlight ideas and perspectives that are needed to keep us relevant and effective as we face a changing world.

My partner, Martha Foster, has done this in the field of global media. Having worked in public broadcasting and documentary for years, she came upon an idea that is simple and profound and just can't be done in the existing media paradigms. We all know that prejudice and cultural hostility is more and more of a problem as the world shrinks and globalization forces us closer and closer to each other. But we lack the approaches necessary to adapt our culture and our expectations to this changing reality. Governments can't do it. Nonprofits can't do it. Corporations can't do it.

Martha's idea is to create a new broadcasting organization, using television and new media, to gather films from around the world that teach us about other cultures and about ourselves, showing us in the most clear of terms, how similar we are to those we think are our opposites on the other side of the world. Through translated films made by film makers living in their own cultures around the world, we can visit these peoples and cultures and see how they think, what their values are, and how they are remarkable in their own approaches to living good lives.

To date, the television industry simply does not work like this. Even public television has limited funding to create these programs, which are far cheaper to produce than conventional "look at the bizarre cultural practices of _____". So, Martha has been working to build alliances and fundraising to try to bring this vision to life. www.letv.org.

What are your favorite examples of social innovation through maturity and vision? I've read some great ones here on Encore.com! I am so grateful for this emerging infrastructure for the releasing of the knowledge and wisdom of our generation to move beyond the human obsession with wealth generation and into the realm of finding news ways to enhance our culture and help it sort out priorities so that we can live more meaningful and sustainable lives.

Thanks for listening! :-)

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