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Newark, NJ
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2023
Project Category: Community Gardens
Description: This intergenerational gardening project will provide girls aged 8 to 18 with an opportunity to pair up with elderly residents to garden together and grow produce in an area that is considered a food desert.
Brevard, NC
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2023
Project Category: Community Gardens
Description: The project will expand a community garden for Hispanic families by adding a 50-foot-by-50-foot patch of tilled rows. Cooking, exercise, and gardening classes will augment the physical improvements.
Elk City, OK
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019
Project Category: Community Gardens
Description: Elk City added nine new table gardens -- designed to accommodate gardeners who use wheelchairs or can't bend easily -- to make its community garden more accessible and appealing to all ages. To accommodate the table gardens, the City laid down gravel. They also added three benches installed on concrete pads. The improvements spurred the City to take on the expense of the garden's water, sewer and electric usage. Since the improvements, the City is exploring the possibility of adding shade structures to shield the benches from the sun, as well as hanging baskets of flowers or vegetables.
Nearby AARP Community Challenge Projects
Hyattsville, MD
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2020
Project Category: Capturing data and feedback from residents
Description: This project created an online tool -- called My Block Counts -- which allows community members to collect and report information related to local environmental health. Before rolling out the tool, researchers held online workshops to teach the community about environmental justice, public infrastructure and community health. Then they invited community members to use My Block Counts to do an inventory of their neighborhoods. The virtual tool guides users through a series of questions about the built environment. Once users complete the questions, their responses are available for other users to access. Project organizers hope the data collected will help community members advocate for improved infrastructure in their neighborhoods. In the future, they plan to roll out the tool on a national level.
Washington, DC
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2020
Project Category: Capturing data and feedback from residents
Description: The 1882 Foundation hoped to strengthen community identity and increase civic engagement in DC's Chinatown, particularly among older adults. The Foundation designed a digital map featuring stories about places with historical and cultural significance to the neighborhood's longtime community members, including past and present residents and leaders. The Foundation distributed storytelling kits, which included tools to help participants tell their stories by writing and recording audio. Project organizers provided storytellers with bilingual instructions in English and Mandarin. To promote the initiative, the Foundation held a Mid-Autumn Festival event at the Wah Luck House, an affordable housing complex. Organizers say the digital platform will help inform urban planning policies by ensuring community priorities are included in redevelopment proposals for Chinatown.
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