Sue Davis recruits volunteer drivers to just take older inhabitants to health care provider appointments and run crucial errands in rural Central Virginia, but she has viewed reluctance to use the service from people who are not acquainted with it.
Davis believed that giving hats, jackets and badges with logos to volunteers would assist inhabitants to discover them and build have faith in.
“I’ve wanted a thing that when any individual sees it, they’ll say, ‘That’s the driving team,’ ” says Davis, 66, of Culpeper, herself a driver and volunteer coordinator for the nonprofit Growing old With each other. That want is getting to be a fact with an AARP Neighborhood Challege grant to fund flyers and things to detect experience-service drivers in the counties served by the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission: Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange and Rappahannock.
“Trust is an crucial section of the equation” in meeting older residents’ transportation requirements, suggests Kristin Lam Peraza, mobility manager for the commission.
Its Local community Challenge grant is one of six awarded in Virginia this calendar year, totaling far more than $97,000, for fast-motion projects to assist communities improve general public spaces, transportation and additional.
A grant to nonprofit Venture Richmond will let it to make a parklet in the Brookland Park community by extending the sidewalk into two parking areas along a street that had no seating or shade for businesses’ patrons.
“It’s a pretty depressing street to expend any time on in the summer months months,” claims Max Hepp-Buchanan of Enterprise Richmond.
Plans phone for created-in seating and umbrellas for shade.
Another grant will enliven a dead-stop street in Lynchburg with art, suggests Susan Brown, application director of the Downtown Lynchburg Association.
Murals will protect the pavement and a developing entrance, and community artwork will hang on brick properties that line the avenue and be element of an out of doors gallery.
“I assume it’s heading to convey a ton of coloration and life to that end of the street,” Brown says, introducing that it opens on to a pathway overlooking the James River.
In Arlington County, the regional Commission on Ageing will use its grant to increase pedestrian visibility at 10 intersections that have no traffic lights, suggests Commissioner William Way, noting that Arlington had 4 pedestrian fatalities in 2019.
Pedestrians could select up a tiny flag from a canister at a crosswalk so they are a lot more visible to motorists, then leave it in a canister on the other side of the street. Precedence will be provided to intersections around senior housing and colleges.
In Powhatan, a grant will fund park benches and many unmotorized a few-wheeled beach cruisers, which older people can use for free of charge.
The benches will deliver relaxation stops beside prolonged stretches of sidewalk, and the cruisers will be enjoyment and beneficial to inhabitants with mobility or harmony challenges, says Jayne Lloyd, Powhatan County Division of Social Services’ program coordinator for seniors.
Another grant will allow Habitat for Humanity-Powhatan to start off preparing for an intergenerational housing undertaking by holding conferences with planners, architects and citizens.
“It’s the philosophy of getting the stakeholders of the community involved at the extremely commencing,” says Susan Weinicki, Habitat’s govt director.
Discover far more at aarp.org/livable.
Sue Lindsey is a author living in Roanoke.
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