Even the short list of the five $100,000 winners covers a broad range of needs. Sharon Rohrbach of St. Louis, Mo., created the Nurses for Newborns Foundation to help economically disadvantaged mothers with high-risk infants get special nursing care and support to keep their newborns healthy and safe.
Donald Berwick, a pediatrician from Cambridge, Mass., started the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to improve hospital safety and prevent unnecessary deaths due to errors and secondary infections.
Wilma Melville of Ojai, Calif., and her FEMA certified dog Murphy helped search for survivors in the horrible aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. The experience inspired Murphy to start the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation which has trained more than 85 canine-firefighter search teams.
Gordon Johnson of Daytona Beach, Fla., created Neighbor to Family to improve the quality of foster care and keep siblings together.
H. Gene Jones of Tucson, Ariz., was inspired by his own love of music to create Opening Minds through the Arts, which helps school children improve academic achievement through integrating arts into the curriculum.
Vibrant encore careers
Other Purpose Prize Fellows are improving the environment, organizing volunteers, promoting literacy, advancing economic development in needy areas, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor. Prize finalists, Freedman says, “show that social entrepreneurship, once thought to be mainly the province of the young, can also be a path to vibrant encore careers for those in the second half of life.”
“The Purpose Prize finalists are taking their wisdom, their skills and, in some cases, their savings to engage in work that has meaning beyond themselves,” adds Jim Emerman, director of the Purpose Prize program and vice president of Civic Ventures. “These men and women are at the forefront of a burgeoning movement that’s reshaping the second half of life and having an extremely positive impact on their communities.”
Get involved
There is so much good work being done, that The Erickson Tribune plans to profile many of these social innovators over the coming months. Over time, it’s our hope that these stories will inspire others to use their own experience and talents to start something new or get involved in an existing endeavor.
If you or someone you know would be a good candidate for the 2008 Purpose Prize competition, go to www.purposeprize.org for information on how to submit an application. All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. ET, March 1, 2008.