Marc Freedman, founder of Civic Ventures, responds today on The Huffington Post to David Brooks’ call for a “generativity revolution,” noting that “the real generativity revolution is well under way. And with the help of smart new policies, this movement of forward-looking baby boomers might actually succeed.”

Freedman writes, “It’s increasingly clear that these older workers aren’t competing with younger people; they are meeting demands for talent that will only grow as the economy recovers.”

The New York Times' David Brooks issues a rousing call to action for the encore generation in his column today.

Under the headline, "The Geezers' Crusade," Brooks calls for a social movement of older adults on behalf of younger people.

"Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly, Brooks writes. "It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change."

Want to find an encore career in 2010 but don’t know how to get started? Here are 10 tips to help you find paid, purposeful work.

1. Download our new Get Started Guide. Acclaimed by The Wall Street Journal and others, it answers 12 frequently asked questions about finding encore careers that provide pay, personal fulfillment and social impact.

2. Watch a video or listen to a podcast by Marci Alboher, our in-house encore careers expert.

Dan Pink’s latest book, Drive, turns traditional thinking about how organizations motivate people (and how we try to motivate ourselves) on its head. After studying the scientific research on motivation, Pink came to the conclusion that what science knows about how to motivate people is entirely different than what organizations do.

If more of the world starts paying attention to Pink’s ideas, we should be seeing fewer carrots and sticks, and a lot more recognition that people are motivated by intrinsic forces like the desire for autonomy and mastery, as well as the quest to be part of something bigger than themselves, which Pink calls purpose. Sound familiar?

On the first day of 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman launched her encore career in her final column for The Washington Post by declaring, “I’m letting myself go.”

She put a positive spin on the phase, explaining, “After all, where will you go when you let yourself go? To let this question fill the free space between deadlines in my life has been quite liberating. It suggests the freedom that can fuel this journey.”

At the Purpose Prize Summit a few weeks ago, Goodman announced she planned to enter the semicolon phase of the “Then ; Now” encore career transition with a group of women friends who were all committed to having an impact on society.

W. Frederick Shaw, sees no reason to stop after working nearly 40 years in international development, primarily in South Asia.

At age 79, the 2009 Purpose Prize fellow is living in Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian state of Punjab, and is providing services to more than 14,000 residents of two slums, Janta Colony and Adarsh Nagar. Nearly all of these residents have incomes below the official national poverty level. But he’s perfectly content and encourages other experienced workers to pursue encore careers in international development.

When I was on vacation last summer in Italy, my country of origin, I was surprised to find two of my best friends telling me what I myself had been thinking about – and what Civic Ventures and Marc Freedman have been talking about.

I call it the third life. As I start the second half of my 50s, I suddenly realized that I was starting to take the years ahead of me as “dealing with the tail of my life,” as if I did not have much time to change things.

After practicing law for many years, Dan Ladd, 59, of Lincoln, Massachusetts, craved a career that offered “a little more sense of adventure,” but his journey to his current job as a veterinary technician was bumpier than he’d bargained for.

CommonWealth, a journal published by the nonprofit think tank, MassInc, tells his story in the Fall 2009 issue to illustrate the unexpected pitfalls – and needed support systems – for people making significant career changes in later life. It’s a wake-up call that highlights the flaws in financial aid and workforce development programs that are designed to serve younger workers and penalize older ones.

The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas roundup published December 13 in The New York Times Magazine debunks stereotypes about older workers being risk averse, noncompetitive and uncooperative.

It cites a 2008 “Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments” study by Gary Charness, an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Marie Claire Villeval of the University of Lyon that compared how “seniors” over age 50 and “juniors” under 30 behaved during experimental games and tasks.

A federal program that has helped about 12,000 former service members transition into encore careers as teachers may expand dramatically if Congress gets its way. The New York Times reports that a bipartisan group in Congress wants to allow more veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to be eligible for the Troops to Teachers program and increase the number of districts in which they can teach.

Their military background serves them well in their new jobs. Tammie Langley, who taught prospective pilots and navigators aeronautics before she began teaching sixth graders in North Carolina told The Times, “Either way, you still have to kind of wipe their noses a bit and kick them in the behind every now and then.”