Fairbanks, AK

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024

Project Category: Addressing community health

Description: This project will provide pots, soil and plants to older adults, allowing them to grow produce at their homes. The food bank will then share produce grown with local families in need.

Duluth, MN

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2023

Project Category: Addressing community health

Description: This project will invite older adults to become vibrant participants in Duluth's farmers markets and mobile grocery program by increasing opportunities to connect through volunteering, community visioning and intergenerational play.

Philadelphia, PA

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2020

Project Category: Addressing community health

Description: This project helped patrons of the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission stay safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Project organizers added a handwashing station to the sidewalk outside the Mission's building, giving unhoused people -- who often lack dependable access to bathroom facilities -- a way to keep germs at bay. They also worked with local artists to design window stickers, which helped keep shelter residents and those seeking food assistance separate, curbing the spread of the virus. Artists also designed sidewalk decals with social distancing instructions. This sparked efforts to engage those same artists in a mural project onsite. Organizers say the project inspired them to design the Mission's building to better accommodate unhoused people. Since the project completed, the organization also began work on a new pocket park onsite.