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Wichita, KS
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2017
Project Category: Engaging residents in vibrant public places
Description: The Wichita Public Library and Bike Walk Wichita launched three historical walking tours, which can be accessed through a smartphone app. It's all about inspiring curiosity in people about their hometown. According to Jeff Flor of the Downtown Development Corporation, Wichita has a lot of stories to tell, from the drugstore sit-in during the Civil Rights movement to the now-gone Victory Arch honoring World War I soldiers. To promote the app, library staff and volunteers participated in an open streets festival while wearing t-shirts with the message Ask me how to travel time.
Oxford, OH
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2026
Project Category: Engaging residents in vibrant public places
Description: The organization will install “chat benches” in parks and along trails, each with posted conversation prompts to help people chat with volunteers. These benches will make it easier for older adults to meet others and feel welcome at public events.
Philadelphia, PA
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2017
Project Category: Engaging residents in vibrant public places
Description: Among the goals of the Go, Go, Go: Making Our Community More Livable project was to enable Chinatown's residents to build friendships -- Go outdoors. Go be creative. Go make friends -- in a linguistically and culturally accessible way. One out of five Chinatown residents is an older adult and nearly 90 percent of those individuals have limited English proficiency. To help foster social connections, the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation offered free art classes, with local artists serving as instructors. The organization then created a pop-up Chinatown art gallery featuring work created in the classes. In addition, PCDC founded a community garden club. More than 150 people ranging in age from 3 to 87 participated in the activities. The PCDC hopes to continue offering free community at its Crane Community Center, which broke ground in 2017 -- the first space of its kind in Chinatown.
Nearby AARP Community Challenge Projects
New Haven, CT
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2026
Project Category: Improved wayfinding
Description: Multiple walking audits will identify accessible loop routes around an apartment complex for older adults. Shared results will support resident walking groups and social engagement.
New Haven, CT
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2025
Project Category: Reconnect Communities
Description: Decades after a highway cut through New Haven neighborhoods, residents still faced barriers created by the interstate, with older adults especially affected by unsafe crossings and limited access to public space and the river. The Arts Council of Greater New Haven led a community-driven effort to reimagine the space beneath the highway as a shared park that could reconnect divided areas. The project engaged hundreds of residents through pop-up sessions, focus groups and intergenerational design activities, translating their input into Phase I design renderings for an accessible, multi-use public space. The renderings reflect long-standing community priorities, including safer walking routes, access to nature and places to gather across generations. The work produced a clear, shared vision that now guides continued engagement and future planning, advancing a broader effort to repair the lasting impacts of past infrastructure decisions.
Project description was created using generative AI and then reviewed for accuracy.
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