Your aarp
Building Better Communities
Through AARP grants, we’re helping create safer, more accessible places for older adults
WHEN OLDER adults in rural Wells, Nevada, were feeling isolated and lonely, an AARP Community Challenge grant helped fund laptops and tablets in libraries and community centers. The grant also allowed for the recruitment of high school students to teach older adults how to use the new technology to connect with loved ones through video calls.
AARP’s Community Challenge grant program is celebrating its 10th year of supporting projects that enhance livability for millions of older adults nationwide. “We’re helping communities meet the top needs identified by their residents,” says Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities, the AARP initiative overseeing the grant program.
A mobile home park in Boulder, Colorado, now has solar lights installed on 20-foot poles to improve walkability after dark. And stops along bus routes in the Navajo Transit System in Fort Defiance, Arizona, now have shelters to protect commuters from the sun. Elsewhere, a parking lot in Ketchikan, Alaska, was turned into a community garden where generations interact, and the city of Atlanta installed corrals for bicycle and scooter parking along busy corridors and away from crosswalks, to clear walking space and improve pedestrian safety. All of these projects received AARP support.
Since 2017, AARP has invested $32.6 million in hundreds of rural, urban and suburban communities, supporting more than 55,000 tangible improvements, along with a wide range of programming and services. Through public safety, infrastructure and accessibility initiatives, the grant program has helped make communities easier for older adults to live in.
“We’ve heard consistently over the years that people over the age of 50 want to remain in their communities as they age,” Watson says.
The grant program was introduced in 2017 in response to a need among local leaders who had projects ready to go but lacked the small sums required to get them going. The AARP Community Challenge began by awarding nearly $780,000 to 88 grantees. This year, $8.3 million funded 750 grants.
“We created the AARP Community Challenge to help towns act quickly on projects that deliver real change,” says Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer.
Grants average $10,000, with some as low as a few hundred dollars, and are awarded to applicants proposing quick-action projects that offer tangible livability improvements. About one-third of grantees are local government entities, and about two-thirds are nonprofits. Watson says a wide range of communities are receiving funding, with some projects serving towns of only a couple hundred people.
Grantees have consistently reported positive outcomes, including engagement by residents and new partnerships. Tens of thousands of volunteers have also gotten involved with executing initiatives, and Livable Communities estimates that 14 million adults over age 50 have directly benefited from the funding.
To find out how to apply, visit aarp.org/communitychallenge