Whenever I speak about the growing interest in encore careers, people ask how they can get started on finding their encores. They want practical steps that can help them move into a new kind of work that blends making a living with making a difference.

Besides our website, Encore.org, there’s a new place to begin: The Encore Career Handbook.

Whatever your political leanings, you’re probably concerned about jobs this election season.

Tune in online Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Eastern, to HuffPost Live, as Encore.org founder and CEO Marc Freedman joins some big names in Tampa., Fla., during the Republican National Convention to talk about solving the unemployment crisis.

Freedman’s fellow panelists are:

By Chris and Nancy Jennison

We’ve always loved writing. And when we left our full-time jobs, we knew we could use our experience as writers to help teach kids. But we needed just a little retooling to shift our focus.

We had changed our lives dramatically in the late 2000s. Nancy retired from her position as literacy staff developer for a northern New Jersey school district. We returned to the Boston area, and Chris cut back his hours as an education book publisher, retiring in 2010. Though we considered ourselves retired, we were really searching for our encores.

By Lisa Holton

Career consultants often urge 50-somethings to head back to college so they can learn skills that will make them stronger job candidates, especially in the current economy, with the unemployment rate for Americans 55-and-up a steep 6.2 percent.

"Having it all" is probably the most misunderstood phrase since, as the late great Erma Bombeck once said about the Equal Rights Amendment, "one size fits all." It has come up whenever there is a backlash – and there have been many – against the increasing empowerment of women. The implication that the women's movement promised or even endorsed that greedy notion is still with us.

We at Encore.org often hear from people who want to embark on encore careers that serve the greater good, but they just don’t know where to begin.

In addition to the resources on our website, there’s a new service from the creator of VocationVacations that may be of help. PivotPlanet provides individualized advice from experts in a variety of encore-friendly fields.

They want to teach refugees, build a clinic in Kenya, impart life skills to inmates and more. The latest round of Marigold Ideas for Good Contest finalists want to put their ideas to work to improve lives.

And you can help them with just a click – your vote. Five of the 15 finalists will win $5,000 to act on their ideas. One of them will win the money, plus a trip valued at up to $5,000 from Road Scholar.

What’s next for long-term nonprofit founders and leaders who have devoted their working lives to solving social problems? That’s the focus of a survey featured this week in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Deborah Greymoon, a Cascade, Colo., nurse and longtime midwife, has heard too many stories of women in the developing world endangered – sometimes killed – by unsafe birthing practices.