SAN FRANCISCO – Encore.org announced today the five winners of the 2012 Purpose Prize, an investment in people 60 and older who are creating fresh solutions to old problems.
This year’s winners, who each receive $100,000, include:
- A pro bono lawyer who exposed massive foreclosure fraud and is now teaching other lawyers how to protect homeowners from unfair lending practices.
Meet the 2012 Purpose Prize Winners
12/05/2012 - 06:29:18am
If you’re looking for inspiration, here are five stories that reveal the power of social innovation – and the capacity of individuals in their encore careers.
- by: Marc Freedman | More >
Founder and Executive Director
Latinas Contra Cancer
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
When her doctor told her she had cancer, Ysabel Duron didn’t think she would die. Her first impulse was to wonder what she was supposed to get out of the experience. Her second was to do a story.
 |
| Judy Cockerton , Treehouse Foundation |
| Watch a video of Judy Cockerton |
| Visit Treehouse Foundation's website |
| Contact Judy Cockerton |
Treehouse Foundation
Purpose Prize Winner 2012
A news story about a 5-month-old boy living in foster care who’d been kidnapped right out of his crib – never to be found – shook Judy Cockerton.
She thought about all the other kids in foster care, the ones no one hears about until something awful happens.
Soon after, Cockerton called a family meeting with her husband, son and daughter, then 18 and 12 years old, and together they talked about how they could help. Within months, in 1999, they became a foster family to two sisters, ages 5 months and 17 months. Eventually they adopted the younger girl.
Can We Solve the Jobs Crisis? Check Out This Discussion
08/28/2012 - 06:48:52am
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: Michele Melendez | More >
Obama Awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to Purpose Prize Fellow
06/20/2012 - 10:27:53am
At a recent White House ceremony, Purpose Prize fellow Dolores Huerta became one of only 13 people – including such big names as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former astronaut John Glenn and musician Bob Dylan – to receive the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The medal is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
- by: Aireen Navarro | More >
Six years ago Mark Goldsmith, winner of the 2008 Purpose Prize, founded Getting Out and Staying Out, a nonprofit program working to keep New York City’s young men out of prison for good. Recidivism rates – the proportion of people who return to prison within three years of their release – hover above 60 percent nationally. In New York City the rate is about half that.
Boaz and Ruth in Richmond, Va., has restored abandoned buildings and homes, generated employment opportunities and changed lives. The neighborhood has seen crime rates drop by 61 percent since the organization's arrival a decade ago. "Eighty percent of the buildings here were boarded up," says founder Martha Rollins, a 2006 Purpose Prize winner. "We're trying to fill the emptiness."
Analysts predict a groundswell of opportunity for those who find themselves working past 65. "Our research confirms that there's an interest in doing work that has social significance, offers a degree of flexibility for work-life balance, that leverages and values experience and that offers the level of income needed for financial sustainability," says Phyllis Segal, vice president at Civic Ventures.
In what might be a surprising trend, a Kauffman Foundation report notes that boomers make up a rising share of entrepreneurs.That's not surprising to Detroit-based Purpose Prize winner Randal Charlton. He says said the trend is being driven by people living longer and boomers' genuine interest in civic ventures.
