Derry, NH

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019

Project Category: Public space activation

Description: To encourage community bonding and intergenerational connections, the Marion Gerrish Community Center created an outdoor space for people to play games. The Center chose large games -- including cornhole, bocce, Jenga, Connect Four, Yardzee, Farkel, chess and checkers -- that would be easy to play and visible from the street. They made the area designated for the games level, ensuring it would be accessible and safe. The Center offers weekly times for older adults to play cornhole and bocce. Community members can sign out the games for use on the property and the Center also loans them out for local events, including Derry Fest, the Derry Farmers Market and the local police departments' National Nite Out.

Snohomish, WA

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2021

Project Category: Public space activation

Description: To give families an intergenerational outdoor activity, Friends of the Snohomish Library installed a story trail. They set up weather-protected stations at several points along a path, each designed to display pages from a storybook. This allows grandparents and parents with children to walk the path and read together, moving from station to station to piece each part of the story. To give families a reason to return, a children's librarian changes the story displayed four times a year. Since installation, project organizers report other communities have replicated the project, creating their own story walks.

Castleton-on-Hudson, NY

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018

Project Category: Public space activation

Description: The Village of Castleton-on-Hudson regularly hosts a Repair Cafe event, where volunteers repaired any item brought to them, if possible. One problem: the event takes place on the second floor of a Village Hall, which has no elevator. This posed an accessibility issue -- locals often complained about climbing the building's difficult staircase. To solve this, the Village moved its Repair Cafe to Noyes Engine House. They also worked to activate a vacant lot next door, installing a community bulletin board, benches and planters onsite. The improvements support wider efforts to revitalize the village's downtown, with the goal of drawing more people to the central business district.