Giving Expertise

(3 of 3)

Other volunteers want to steer away from work-related projects, as long as the assignment engages them at a high level. Innovative nonprofits are designing projects accordingly. The Medicare Rights Center in New York State set up a program called Seniors Out Speaking to attract recent retirees who would like to develop a useful new field of expertise. The center gives the retirees intense training in the complex array of available Medicare plans, after which they can choose to give monthly hour-long presentations at various community venues. Or they can sign up for "Medicare Minute," returning regularly to the same senior center with a different five-minute speech on an aspect of the new insurance law. "It's appealing to boomers," says volunteer director Betty Duggan, "getting up and being an expert."

Knowledge-based programs such as Medicare Rights are drawing new enlistees with that boomer mantra of achieving personal growth. Retired elementary school teacher Linda Sicher, 58, of New York City, for example, pieced together several volunteer turns to combat her greatest postwork fear: "that my brain will die." Not a chance. Each activity has taught her something new, and she has been able to connect the dots between them. Once every month she's on call at the Mt. Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention (SAVI) program, ready to speed to the side of a rape or abuse victim before the professionals arrive. Leveraging her training for SAVI, she created a program on child abuse at the Family Center in Manhattan for grandmothers raising grandchildren alone.

When the slot fits the volunteer perfectly, the experience may even help answer the eternal question: What do I do with the rest of my life? Robert Kinney, 58, head of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Las Cruces, N.M., may have found his answer when he agreed to a stint for the International Senior Lawyers Project, which uses experienced attorneys to promote the rule of law around the world. After Kinney spent three months (pro bono, but with expenses paid) setting up Bulgaria's first public defender's office and a month in Mongolia on a similar mission, his vision for retirement was transformed. He and his wife sold their intended retirement haven, a house in Honduras. Now he hopes to move to Budapest after retirement and be a Senior Lawyers volunteer throughout Eastern Europe. Kinney had not looked forward to retiring, but now he says, "I'd love to retire if I could do this kind of work and not just lie in a beach chair."