President-elect Barack Obama ran as a post-boomer candidate, the one who could put behind the rancor of the 1968 generation that has long been divided not only by the Vietnam War but by the “culture war” and a host of other issues.

It’s true that Obama comes at such discussions with an approach that partly reflects that he was only 7 years old in that pivotal year.

But it’s not true that Obama is post-boomer. His birth year, 1961 was one of the peak birth years of the entire boom, with many more babies that year than in the early years of the baby boom, which began in 1946 and didn’t end until at least 1964.

“What am I waiting for?” Caroline Kennedy says she asked herself when she turned 50.

The New York Times’ Katharine Q. Seelye suggests that Kennedy’s sense of the passing of time is one of the motivations behind her decision to seek the U.S. Senate seat expected to be vacated by Hillary Clinton.

Boot camps that aim to “retire retirement,” vacations that let you try out dream careers and a new crop of life coaches are flourishing as boomers seek help making the transition to their encore careers.

“Sometimes a big turn in your life requires more concentration than we get on a daily basis,” Judy Goggin, vice president of Civic Ventures, told The Wall Street Journal. “The idea of going away for a week – and stepping out from your regular world – can be really appealing.”

Steve Lohr of The New York Times reports:

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

The 14 fellows have résumés brimming with achievement — including a former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.

People pursuing encore careers are getting into trouble – in a good way.

The Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University marked a turning point in the emerging encore careers movement. Yes, encore careers match untapped talent with unmet needs.Yes, encore careers combine continued income, personal fulfillment and social impact. Yes, encore careers can produce bodies of work as, or more, significant than the careers they follow.

And yes, participants at the first-ever gathering of people in their encore careers set their sights even higher – a veritable encore uprising of innovation and experience to reverse the outmoded policies and systemic inequities that are hobbling our communities and our country.

"There’s a movement afoot, and our generation’s been a part of a lot of movements," says Sheila Moore of Chattanooga, Tenn. "I’m a younger baby boomer, so maybe I wasn’t on the vanguard of that one. But I have the opportunity to be on the vanguard of this one."

This short video, put together by the Mill Valley Film Group, provides a taste of the recent Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University, a gathering of hundreds of people in, or in support of, encore careers that combine social impact personal meaning and continued income in the second half of life.

“Start Your Own Nonprofit” by Kimberly Palmer, US World News and World Report, December 18, 2008

The number of nonprofits has grown 30 percent over the past decade, a trend driven in part by increasing awareness of global poverty and the Internet’s ability to connect people to one another. Purpose Prize winner Adele Douglass, 62, started Humane Farm Animal Care in Herndon, Va., after deciding that none of the existing animal rights organizations were able to create standards for the treatment of farm animals intended for consumption.

“Purpose Prize for 3 Working to Change Society,” by Meredith May, San Francisco Chronicle, December 3, 2008.

Three Bay Area Baby Boomers who are changing the world in “encore careers” have been selected for the national Purpose Prize, given to social entrepreneurs over 60.

“Seniors With ‘Purpose’ Win Prizes,” By Janet Kornblum, USA Today, December 3, 2008.

The winners are a diverse lot: a former movie industry worker who used his skill to invent an inexpensive peanut sheller to help the poor in the developing world; a retired professor who’s organized volunteers to help teach English to refugees; and a former New York executive who is helping give life skills and job guidance to ex-prisoners.

“Entrepreneurship Not Just For Young Bucks,” by Bill Drayton, Echoing Green(blog), December 11, 2008

Is sixty-one the new thirty? So it would seem for the fifteen winners of the 2008 Purpose Prize, which is awarded annually by Civic Ventures to encourage and empower people to start Encore Careers using the skills earned over a lifetime to create innovative social change. Winner Joe James, 61, a former government employee, started the Corporation for Economic Opportunity to empower black farmers in the South to participate in the burgeoning green economy.

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.

Nonprofits face an unprecedented leadership deficit, as a wave of retirements hits just as social needs are exploding. The Silicon Valley Encore Initiative is an effort to fill the gap by helping recently retired or soon-to-be-retired corporate employees transition to encore careers in the social sector.

“We thought it was a terrific idea – one worth writing about and one worth emulating,” said Jeff Chu, senior editor at Fast Company, which named the initiative one of the magazine’s Social Enterprises of the Year. “It’s a clever solution to a nagging, ongoing problem.”

Do you know someone who is changing the world in the second half of life?

Are you using your encore career to pioneer a new approach to a social challenge?

Nominations are now open for The Purpose Prize — five $100,000 and five $50,000 awards for social innovators over 60. (Winners of the 2008 Purpose Prizes will be announced December 3.)