Retirement To Re-Fire-Ment Part III

The capacity to address the varied needs of aging boomers has yet to be developed. Communities have not yet developed plans to take advantage of the potential resource of retired boomers.

Changes in infrastructure and policies will be needed across all sectors of society—public and private, for-profit and voluntary, faith-based and secular. The process by which such changes occur may be slow, halting, and even contentious.

Yet, boomers will not—and need not—simply wait for others to create such structures. Out of necessity, they will likely make something new and different of this new life phase, as they have done with earlier phases of life. The question is, what will they make of it? And what can be done in the meantime to reach across the social spectrum and help them envision a life that achieves meaning by connecting in new ways to the community around them?

Faith-based institutions can foster the social networks that encourage members to connect not only to each other, but to the larger community as well.

As boomers enter later life with many relatively healthy, productive years ahead, they have the potential to become a social resource of unprecedented proportions, and create a new vision of what it means to grow older in America.

This possibility offers a way to reframe public discussion about the implications of the aging baby boom, shifting the focus away from the expectation of frail and dependent aging to one of activity and productivity.

Three conclusions will help realize this vision:

(1) large-scale efforts will be needed to mobilize boomers to contribute their time, skills, and experience to address community problems at the local level;

(2) many organizations that utilize volunteers will require substantial retooling if they are to attract and retain boomer volunteers; and

(3) the news media and the advertising industry can play key roles in helping society rethink the meaning, purpose, and status of the older years.

The Boomer Blogger