Check out events in your area that can help you find an encore career. Visit the Encore.org Calendar. To suggest an event for the Calendar, send details to Terry Nagel at tnagel@civicventures.org.

Does your agency, organization or company actively recruit and engage encore workers? Have you put in place policies that make it a comfortable environment for people over age 50? Are you proud of what you’re doing to tap the encore talent pool to meet your organization’s mission?

AARP’s annual Best Employers for Workers 50+ award recognizes companies and organizations from all sectors that are creating “roadmaps for the workplaces of tomorrow.” Applications for the 2009 contest are due by February 13.

If you’d like, the Encore Careers campaign of Civic Ventures invites you to send a copy of your application to chalvorsen@civicventures.org or to 114 Sansome St., Suite 850, San Francisco, CA 94104.

What: Older Worker Demonstration Grants from the Department of Labor.

How much? Approximately a dozen awards of between $750,000 to $1,000,000.

To whom? Workforce Investment Boards and other entities that direct federal, state, and local funding to workforce development programs.

Deadline: February 19, 2009.

For more information: Click here (pdf)

A film lighting director invents a peanut-shelling machine in North Carolina – and raises the income of farmers in Africa. A retired language professor organizes volunteers to help thousands of war refugees start a new life -- in Fargo, North Dakota. An immigrant who arrived with $6 in his pocket helps send Latino students to college – with money raised from his fellow gardeners in California.

The 15 recipients of the 2008 Purpose Prize – six $100,000 winners and nine $10,000 winners -- are taking on some of society's biggest challenges, from poverty to pollution and from health care to homelessness. They are also demonstrating that social innovation can spring from an unexpected source: experienced adults over 60.