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Mobile, AL
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2020
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: Organizers with Via Health, Fitness and Enrichment Center envisioned a community green space where Mobile residents of all ages can interact. This project added two gazebos to the space, providing visitors with shade. Project organizers also installed a bike rack and dog watering station onsite and volunteers constructed a raised garden bed for growing flowers, herbs and vegetables. Since the transformation, Midtown Meets has become a meetup spot for local walking and biking clubs, a space for college students to take study breaks and a place for older adults to socialize. In addition, a new volunteer group, called Midtown Neighbors, continues to meet to work in the community garden beds.
Forest City, NC
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: This project will provide spaces for gathering and dining outdoors by adding seating and shade coverings throughout the Grahamtown neighborhood. The communal spaces will welcome older adults by allowing them to rest away from the sun's rays.
San Jose, CA
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2021
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the local economy in San Jose's Washington neighborhood. To help meet the community's needs, Veggielution hosted free arts and environmental education programming. The local nonprofit, which aims to connect people through food and farming, invited people to the SoFa pocket park, which the organization created on the site of an underused parking lot. Events included a monthly garden art workshop and live musical and theater performances by local arts organizations. Additionally, Veggielution worked with a local arts school to create a mural for the pocket park. The activities helped link residents to resources, such as food assistance and entrepreneurship training, and connected local nonprofit organizations to each other, creating a better web of support for the community.
Nearby AARP Community Challenge Projects
Columbia, SC
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2020
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: As part of efforts to activate space and increase the vitality of Columbia's downtown, this project created the city's first parklet. Parklets transform on-street parking spaces into public gathering spaces. Originally intended to be temporary, Columbia's miniature park consists of a ground-level, fenced-in deck featuring an art installation, a cafe table and chairs and new planters. While several nearby restaurants lack outdoor seating space, the parklet remedied this, giving visitors a space to eat and socialize. To gather public feedback about the new space, city staff displayed a QR code onsite, which linked to an online survey. Spurred by the success of this project, organizers made plans to add more parklets downtown. City staff have also looked into creating a parklet ordinance, which would allow local businesses to create similar spaces in the future.
Columbia, SC
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022
Project Category: Lifelong housing and accessibility
Description: This project purchased and installed equipment for the center's new physical location to support an adult day-care center, community space and affordable housing units.
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