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Dale Olen is the winner of the first Fred Lindner Prize for Social Innovation in Wisconsin, modeled on the Purpose Prize.

It was, as they say, a watershed moment.

At a recent statewide environmental lobbying day, Dale Olen looked on with pride as half a dozen older adults whom he had trained as water advocates lobbied their legislators for the first time.

Olen has taken skills he honed helping people foster healthy relationships with one another and applied them to helping people foster healthy relationships with the earth.

For his work on water issues in the Great Lakes region, Olen was recently awarded the first Fred Lindner Prize for Social Innovation in Wisconsin. Funded by the Helen Bader Foundation, the $5,000 prize (with another $5,000 to an organization of the winner's choosing) honors Wisconsin-based social innovators age 50 or older who are channeling their creativity and talents to address critical social problems. It is the first regional prize modeled on Civic Ventures' national Purpose Prize.

As a doctoral candidate studying psychology at the University of Kansas during the early 1970s, Olen began working with a peace and justice center promoting peace in Vietnam. His group was an early advocate of corporate social responsibility: They bought shares in corporations with defense contracts, then proposed shareholder resolutions to cancel the contracts.

“I came to the conclusion from knocking my head up against corporate and organizational structures that, to try to get things changed, it might be better to work toward justice for individuals,” he said.

He compiled a list of 14 skills he believed all people need, including thinking reasonably, developing self-confidence, managing anger, handling depression, overcoming anxiety, resolving conflict and establishing intimacy in relationships.

He created the Life Skills Center in Milwaukee in 1976 to help people learn those skills as well as what he calls “other relationship stuff,” such as marriage and family counseling and management training. He headed the center for 28 years, at one time also operating two satellite offices.

He left the Life Skills Center in 2001, and at age 61, looked for a pattern in his lifetime of work. He concluded, “It was almost always about relationships: people relating to one another, relating to employees, relating to what was around them.” What was most important to him, he decided, was the ultimate relationship of humans with their planet.

“I think the contribution I can make is having people pay attention to the way they relate to the earth. Just as humans are attracted to one another and care for other people once they understand each other, so are people who get out and look at the world attracted to the earth,” he said. “You have to study, learn and understand something before you appreciate it. And if you appreciate it, you will naturally take care of it.”

Olen joined the Sierra Club and began working with other environmental organizations to convince Wisconsin legislators to approve the Great Lakes Compact, which would prevent water from being routed outside the Great Lakes basin. As a member of the Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers board, he also has helped raise funds for a Great Lakes restoration project.

He created a three-day seminar to teach older adults how water systems work and trains them to become advocates for water issues. On a rented bus, the group visits sewer district and water filtration plants and meets with legislators and environmentalists. About 25 adults have taken the class so far.

One of his “graduates” is Sarah Dean, who nominated him for the Fred Lindner Prize. She said, “We are so in awe of him. He is so dedicated, so knowledgeable, so innovative and committed to something that is very important.”