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Purpose Prize

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The Latest from CoGenerate

Overheard on Text: When the Stereotypes Are True

Overheard on Text: When the Stereotypes Are True

As colleagues from different generations (x and millennial), Marci Alboher and Duncan Magidson have been leading talks and workshops sharing their insights about working across generations. As they plan, they usually text furiously, sharing ideas and reflections....

Meet Our Growing Roster of Champions!

Meet Our Growing Roster of Champions!

We’re proud to introduce you to a group of esteemed thought leaders, changemakers, entrepreneurs, researchers and organizers who are partnering with us to make cogeneration a powerful force in American life. These 11 CoGen Impact Fellows are thinking up (and lifting...

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Terry Dickinson

Virginia Dental Association/Missions of Mercy
Purpose Prize Fellow 2008

Providing free dental care to the underinsured, uninsured and the working poor.

In 1996, Terry Dickinson decided he needed to leave his successful private dental clinic because staying “would not fill my soul for the rest of my life.” In 1999, he was offered the opportunity to run the Virginia Dental Association. He accepted the job, and was immediately struck by the appalling condition of dental care in rural and impoverished Virginia communities. In 2000, at age 58, Dickinson launched the Missions of Mercy (MOM) Project under the auspices of the Virginia Dental Association Foundation, the first mobile oral health care outreach program of its kind in the state. Volunteer dentists and advanced dental students create a “service site” for two to six days in under-served areas, treating the working poor, elderly, disabled and uninsured residents. Since July of 2000, MOM has provided 28,423 Virginia MOM patients more than $13.2 million worth of free dental care. Ten other states have copied the model, serving more than 67,000 patients with $27 million in free care, and two more states plan new programs in 2009. “I am often asked about how much money I have ‘lost’ by taking this job. My answer is – and always will be – ‘It isn’t what I lost by leaving, but rather what I would have lost if I had stayed.'”