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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.
Lebanon, IN
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: To help older adults attend the dozens of events The Heart of Lebanon stages downtown each year, this project provided seating and personal umbrellas (including ones that can be used as a cane) on-site.
Lemmon, SD
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: Staff at the Lemmon Public Library saw a need to reduce social isolation in town, particularly among older residents. To address this, they set out to improve the library's public gathering space. Project organizers created a new bakery cafe, purchasing folding tables with stacking chairs, an acrylic pastry cabinet, a cake cover and cupcake display, tablecloths and pump pots for coffee. Since the cafe's opening, the library has used new tables and chairs at hundreds of events and the space has accommodated pop-up shops. The opportunity to bake for the cafe led some residents to launch their own baking businesses and one retired baker was inspired to plan a workshop for women starting businesses. Sparked by the success of the cafe, library staff have since pursued other opportunities to expand community space, including providing library patrons with an outdoor area for reading and gathering.
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Seattle, WA
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024
Project Category: Digital navigation skills
Description: This project will provide digital literacy classes to Latino immigrant workers. This will give lower-income residents access to computers and improve their technology skills, allowing them to access job opportunities.
Seattle, WA
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2017
Project Category: Engaging residents alongside thought leaders in problem solving
Description: Seattle's city government invited technology specialists, designers and older adults to take part in a weekend hackathon. Participants brainstormed ways to use public data and technology to understand the built environment and improve the lives of Seattle's older adult residents. The City offered cash prizes to teams with winning ideas. Team Pandora for Streets took home the top prize for their map that used unusual crowdsourced data to evaluate the urban environment, such as street-level smells and noises. Other winning projects used crowdsourced bus stop data to evaluate accessibility and visualized needed repairs to Seattle's sidewalk network. Part of the Age-Friendly Seattle initiative, the civic hackathon reflects Seattle's commitment to becoming a livable community for people of all ages and abilities, Candice Faber, the city's civic technology advocate, said.
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