Do you need more training to transition into your encore career? AARP Foundation’s Women’s Scholarship Program is providing scholarship funds to women 40 and older who have limited financial resources and who are seeking new job skills, training and educational opportunities. Online only applications will be accepted from February 1 through March 31, 2011.

To be eligible for a scholarship, applicants must be:

• At least 40 years old by March 31, 2011

Voting starts today for the first-ever Launch Pad contest, which will award $5,000 to five individuals over age 45 who are solving community problems in creative ways. The winners also will receive resources and support from the Encore.org community to help their projects succeed.

We asked if you had questions, and you most certainly did! We can’t answer all of them, so we picked the ones that were asked many times or the ones that raised the most universal issues. Barbara Chandler Allen, a 2010 Purpose Prize winner, who founded and runs a nonprofit called Fresh Artists, answers the first three questions. And I answered the last three.

American Legion Auxiliary "Call to Service Corps" Consortium Announces AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA Service Opportunities

A consortium of military, veteran and civilian organizations led by the American Legion Auxiliary is offering 55 AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA national service assignments in 2011.

Are you 50+? Have you started thinking "what's next for me?" What do you see happening? And how will you get there?

For those seeking new opportunities for gratifying paid employment, join Discovering What's Next to explore the option of an encore career: work that provides personal meaning, continued income and social impact. Free admission.

Let the prognostication begin!

Predictably the New Year – in which the first of the baby boomers turn 65 – began with much of the usual hand-wringing over what the aging of the country’s largest demographic will mean for the economy, politics and culture.

From across the pond comes word that Britons are just as obsessed about aging as Americans. After age 50, they enter an "identify void," writes Geraldine Bedell in The Telegraph.They are "shunted off our television screens and expected to 'move aside' in other jobs. Ignored by advertisers, they become of less interest to the media. They are on a downward spiral of invisibility. Once they leave employment, they find it hard to get work."

A job placement firm is providing free job searching advice today and tomorrow (December 27 and 28) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Standard Time.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., is providing the service for job seekers who call (312) 422-5010. Anyone looking for work may call, whether currently employed or not. Standard phone charges apply.

Challenger is usually hired by firms that have laid off employees, in order to help those workers find new jobs.

“You don't have to be a lottery winner to make a difference in your community or halfway around the globe,” writes Kelly Greene says in her "How to Change the World" column in today's The Wall Street Journal. “People who are winding down first or primary careers and looking for new directions are discovering that for the cost of a weekend getaway, they can help change the world. Or start to."