Life Is But A Dream

(4 of 7)

For starters, she booked a ticket to Bolivia with her husband Ken Barratt. Both of them are active Quakers and wanted to visit the relatively large population of practicing Quakers in Bolivia. "Well, when we got there, the poverty was overwhelming, and the people were marvelous, and so back home we raised a bit of money"--a couple of thousand dollars--"and sent it to them. And then we went back the next year unannounced." The small donation had paid off. The Bolivians had finished a four-room schoolhouse and improved their water supply. Barratt had also sent some old chemistry equipment, and when she arrived, she found eight girls sitting around a table in the school looking at molecular structures, a sight that warmed her heart.

That was the genesis of Barratt's first postretirement venture, Quaker Bolivia Link, a nonprofit founded in 1995 that funds dozens of projects in rural Bolivia, mostly high in the Andes where government funds rarely reach anyone. Most of the projects focus on stabilizing the food and water supply, though the organization takes its direction solely from locals and strives to help them achieve what they need most, be that greenhouses, schools or trees. "We don't really take them out of poverty--we know that," says Barratt. Over the past 10 years, Quaker Bolivia Link has raised $600,000. "But we take them one step up and give them a sense of hope and empowerment."

In recent years, however, with Quaker Bolivia Link fully up and running, Barratt has been raising awareness about poverty closer to home, in San Diego, where she and Ken moved in 2001. Now she pours her creative energies into Street Light, a newspaper for the homeless that she co-edits. Not only are the vendors homeless, so are many of the reporters, writers and board members. "We try to give a voice to this segment of society that is not just ignored but almost treated like untouchables," says Barratt. Her official role at the paper is to find stories and sign up people to write them, but she ends up doing nearly everything. "I'm the only one on the editorial staff who's retired, so I'm free to go out and take a picture in the middle of the day or cover a story," she says, "and I do a lot of reporting and writing as well."

Some Like It C-C-Cold

Charlie Berger, 66

Adventure Tour Operator

East Bettford, Vt.

"I've always seen my life as interesting, but since I've retired, I've been able to do more of the interesting part," says Charlie Berger, a retired veterinarian who, upon moving to East Bettford, Vt., took two Alaskan wolves with him. In his spare time he volunteers to tend the dogs in sled races, such as the Iditarod that runs from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, and he leads adventure--natural history tours to remote areas of North America. This past November he went to Churchill, on the Hudson Bay in Canada, to take 14 souls to see polar bears. Last year he led a 500-mile canoe trip down the Yukon.