Portland organizations are joining together to further encore careers.

Last week I participated in a “Work + Service Forum” in Portland, Oregon, that clearly demonstrated that this city is a leader in advancing encore careers. The progress is clear and the collaboration is real. People work closely together, respect one another, are very thoughtful about what they do and integrate their work in many innovative ways.

About 100 people attended this day-long conference, whose purpose was to “advance the agenda of the work-service continuum for 50+.” It was cosponsored by Metropolitan Family Services, Life by Design NW, Hands On Greater Portland, AARP and Oregon Volunteers.

These Portland organizations are working together to shape a new vision of success for the second half of life and to put in place the ideas and innovations necessary to make this vision a reality. They’ve launched new initiatives and come together to take action in new ways to tap boomers’ experience to address social problems. They also continue to work hard to expand and deepen what they’re doing to tap encore talent more broadly for the community.

However, the challenge of older workers finding jobs in any sector – nonprofit, public or private – was high on everyone’s minds and people are discouraged. Organizations in Portland are seeing a large upswing in volunteering, but huge challenges in people finding social purpose work. Many nonprofit and public agencies have experienced significant cutbacks; they can’t keep existing staff, let alone bring on new ones.

The encore career concept resonates and the Portland partners are putting multiple pathways in place that can lead to encore careers. But it’s challenging to know where these pathways will lead in this economy and what the social purpose job market will look like as the economy turns around.

Presenters at the conference included Phyllis Cohn and Joyce DeMonnin of AARP, Karen Beal of Hands On Greater Portland; Karen Shimada of Life by Design, Marj Cannon of Metropolitan Family Service, Mary Louise McClintock of Oregon Community Foundation and Kathleen Joy or Oregon Volunteers. I gave a presentation on encore careers.

If you want to know more about what’s happening in Portland, check out Life by Design NW.

Editor’s Note: Nancy Peterson is a vice president at Civic Ventures.