Big Picture Company Co-Founder Dennis Littky Recognized as Purpose Prize Fellow, Joins Ranks of Social Innovators Over Age 60 Leading with Experience
For Immediate Release
November 8, 2007
Big Picture Company Co-Founder Dennis Littky Recognized as Purpose Prize Fellow, Joins Ranks of Social Innovators Over Age 60 Leading with Experience
Purpose Prize Fellows Solve Social Problems, Disprove the Notion That Innovation is the Province of the Young and Demonstrate What’s Possible in an Aging Society
PROVIDENCE — Civic Ventures, a think tank and program incubator helping society achieve the greatest return on experience, has designated Providence’s Dennis Littky as one of its 2007 Purpose Prize Fellows. The Purpose Prize is a three-year, $9 million program investing in Americans over age 60 who are leading a new age of innovation to solve critical social problems in the second half of life. The Purpose Prize seeks to shine a light on the critical work of individual innovators and combine these individual efforts into a wave of social entrepreneurship that could transform America.
Dennis Littky, co-founder of the Big Picture Company, has been selected for his work at the organization’s flagship school in Providence, the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (“The MET”). The Big Picture Company is a nonprofit education reform organization that seeks to catalyze vital changes in American education by generating and sustaining small, innovative, personalized schools. Under Littky’s leadership, the Met has expanded from a single school in downtown Providence to a network of seven small schools across Rhode Island and has prepared all 750 of its students for collegiate and professional success.
“It is an honor to receive this award and to be included with such an impressive group of prime-timers,” said Littky. “Each of my fellow recipients has so much to offer our nation’s youth and I look forward to organizing a network of prime-timers that can be thought partners with our ongoing work at the Big Picture Company. High school and college students can benefit from having mentors and advisers who have a wealth of educational and life experience to share.”
The Purpose Prize supports honorees by helping develop their capacity, linking them with funders and venture philanthropists and connecting them to other social innovators over 60. The 2007 honorees will meet for the first time at an Innovation Summit cosponsored by Civic Ventures and the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Center for Social Innovation, one of the world’s leading academic centers focused on social entrepreneurship. The Summit will take place November 10-12 on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif.
Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures — co-founder of the Purpose Prize and author of a new book, Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (PublicAffairs Press, June 2007) — says that Dennis Littky and other Fellows represent big changes in how boomers and older Americans approach work.
“As baby boomers leave their midlife careers and continue working into their 60s, we are experiencing the biggest transformation of the American workforce since the women’s movement,” says Freedman. “One of the most interesting and significant developments from this transformation is the emergence of social innovation and entrepreneurialism from people over 60. And there are no better examples of these pioneers than the Purpose Prize Fellows.”
In Encore (www.Encore.org), Freedman outlines a new stage of life between the end of midlife careers and the beginning of true old age, introducing a new stage of work — the “encore career” — that combines continued income, new meaning and greater impact. Prize Fellows, 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.”
###
Civic Ventures (www.civicventures.org) is a think tank and program incubator working to help society achieve the greatest return on experience.
The Big Picture Company (www.bigpicture.org) is a not-for-profit education reform organization that seeks to catalyze vital changes in American education by generating and sustaining small, innovative, personalized schools and by leading a national movement to impact policy decisions and educational systems across the country. Big Picture Company currently manages a network of 51 high schools, four middle schools and four elementary schools across the United States. Big Picture schools are also underway or being considered in Australia, the Netherlands, Liberia, Ireland, The United Kingdom, Canada and Israel.