Individuals and organizations pledged to sustain the momentum from the first-ever Encore Careers Summit this month, committing themselves to projects and plans to bring a windfall of human talent to bear on our generation’s most pressing challenges.

“We are going to do something extraordinary today,” Ruth Wooden declared at the start of the summit at Stanford University. “We are going to actually launch a movement.”

Wooden, president of Public Agenda and chair of Civic Ventures’ board of directors, challenged individuals to declare what they will do to advance the movement in 2009, and introduced 10 organizations with concrete plans to launch or expand encore programs.

The encore careers idea appears to have a “viral” quality. Missouri’s Department of Mental Health plans to match retirees, through both volunteer and paid positions, with unmet community mental health needs. Sharon Aldrich said the she got the idea when she heard Civic Ventures board member Sherry Lansing talking about California’s EnCorps Teachers initiative. “We can do that,” she said she told herself. A few months later, she says, “We have a plan and apparently we’re going to implement it.”

Aspiranet, which already manages Experience Corps Bay Area and Encore AfterSchool, plans to launch Encore California, the first statewide effort to provide job staffing services helping older Californians find encore jobs in the social sector. Modeled after ReServe in New York, Encore California will target job placements in child welfare, after-school programs, government agencies and other nonprofits.

Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, pledged to create cross-generational learning teams to link younger and older educators and would-be educators. “These teams will open new opportunities for millions of non-teaching Boomers who are eager to pursue Encore careers in education,” he said, specifically citing a plan to recruit scientists retiring from NASA into science teaching encore careers.

Jan Abushakrah said a September article in The Oregonian newspaper identifying Portland Community College as an “encore college” produced a flood of interest from people ready to reinvent themselves. “We are somewhere between panic and total excitement,” she said, detailing PCC’s plans to develop student support staff and services to welcome encore students, define clear career pathways in a variety of fields, build bridges with employers and community organizations, and expand workforce development funding to direct encore workers toward the state’s high-need areas.

The Girl Scouts of America is using flexible work arrangements and other innovations to actively attract those looking for encore careers, said Michael Watson, the organization’s senior vice president for human services and himself an encore careerist who moved to the Girl Scouts from a corporate career at IBM and GE. Watson also is heading a committee of the National Human Services Assembly to identify “best practices” to recruit encore careerists.

The Partnership for Public Service is expanding opportunities for those interested in service with the federal government. In the next year, the partnership’s FedExperience Transitions to Government is helping employees at IBM and other private sector partners make the transition, and it's working with federal agencies such as the Treasury Department and the Federal Aviation Administration to develop recruiting strategies to attract talented boomers. “We believe that talented, experienced baby boomers serving in encore careers in government help us fulfill our challenging mission and, even more importantly, help transform government by infusing innovation and best practices from the private sector,” said Leslie Ann Pearson, who is managing the FedExperience pilot project.

A slew of individuals and organizations are taking the broader encore careers model and launching local coalitions and networks. In Connecticut, a state-wide interagency approach is being developed. Encore!Hartford, is a pilot program created in a collaboration of the University of Connecticut, United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut, Leadership Greater Hartford, the Connecticut Department of Labor and Capital Workforce Partners. The team is creating an education and employment services pipeline to help mid-career and traditional retirement-aged professionals transition to managerial and specialty careers in the nonprofit sector. The next step, says David Garvey, director of the University of Connecticut Nonprofit Leadership Program: Encore!Connecticut.

Similarly, Jacksonville, Florida, is seeking to become a model encore community with a large supply of paid and unpaid work opportunities for older adults. “To that end, we are building a diverse business and nonprofit leadership network for 2009,” said Mark LeMaire of the Jacksonville United Way, who said he expects each participant to make a concrete commitment to retain or recruit older workers. Jacksonville has been chosen by the Florida Department of Elder Affairs as a pilot city for a new Web site promoting such work opportunities.

Around the room, other attendees called for encore career “chapters” or networks in Dallas, the Carolinas, Ohio and Puerto Rico, as well as in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. A unionist pledged to introduce the encore career through the United Steelworkers Union to attract steelworkers being forced into retirement in the Chicago area, while another committed to raise awareness of encore careers in the Asian community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Another participant offered to convene a “mini Encore Summit” with local foundations, community leaders and nonprofits.

There was a general demand for more tools to aid such efforts, such as videos and brochures to introduce the encore careers idea, curriculum for local universities and community colleges, and online social networking tools that would provide a mechanism for connecting similar initiatives and allow people to share lessons learned and resources (coming on Encore.org!).

Summit participants also urged a greater focus on public policy, specifically to address the need for universal health coverage and to remove the financial penalties for retired public employees who want to work after retirement. They said government officials should be invited to the next Encore Careers Summit.

To promote encore careers, one attendee called for a Center for Innovation that could be a model for the Obama administration. Another suggested “Encore: The TV Show.”

Wooden summarized the session at the end of the day. “The Encore Careers movement has been born here today, but its life is now in your hands,” she said, asking for a show of hands:

• Will you spread the word and become a powerful ambassador for the idea of the encore career?
• Will you send everyone you know to encore.org so we can build a community of people who can help each other?
• Will you find roles in your organization for people in their encore careers?
• Will you create the products and services to help people make the transition to an encore career?
• Will you help prepare people for their encore careers?
• Will you work to enact the policies that will enable millions more to launch encore careers? And finally,
• Will you come back next year?

What will you, or your organization, do to advance the encore careers movement in 2009? Add your pledges or suggestions as a comment below.