AARP Oregon Grants Boost Disaster Resilience

Providing free light bulbs, solar outdoor pathway lights and carpet tape to keep rugs from slipping might not seem like much, but Cheri Salter knew those items could help improve safety for residents in her home community of Brookings.

That’s why Salter’s nonprofit — Ruth’s Eye of the Storm — used most of its $2,500 AARP Community Challenge grant to purchase the items and give them away earlier this year. The nonprofit was founded in 2024 and provides support services for domestic violence survivors and their families in the small coastal community near the California state line.

The giveaways at community events were part of a project that also provided two AARP HomeFit Guide training sessions for domestic violence survivors to help make their homes safer and more comfortable, according to Judie Salter, 72, the nonprofit’s grant manager (and Cheri’s mother).

In June, AARP awarded more than $88,000 in grants to eight nonprofits and governments across Oregon. The grants, which are given annually, include all 50 states and fund quick-action projects to make communities more livable. Projects have a focus on serving people ages 50 and older and must be completed by Dec. 15.

This year’s Oregon grantees were chosen from 54 applicants coming from across the state, says Stacey Triplett, AARP Oregon engagement and local advocacy director. Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer, said in announcing the grants that this year the organization is “particularly proud to invest in projects benefitting often overlooked rural areas.”

“AARP Community Challenge projects may be quick to launch, but their impact is long-lasting,” she added.

SPRUCING UP CITY HALL
In Oregon, the chosen projects covered a range of efforts, including providing computers and upgrading technology at a Portland organization and renovating the city hall lobby in Powers — located in Coos County — to help make it more accessible.

In Brookings, an estimated 120 individuals and families benefited from the grant awarded to Ruth’s Eye of the Storm, according to Cheri Salter, who says the nonprofit is named for a biblical character and also to represent the calm that can be found in a storm’s eye. “I want to be that calm for people,” says Salter, a certified community health worker.

She says the scope of the nonprofit’s project expanded as she and her volunteers went to homes to install lightbulbs for those who couldn’t physically do so, cleared yards to create safe pathways, and helped with minor house improvements.

Salter’s team also helped a woman who had lived without running water in her trailer for two years. Because the woman lived on a limited income, Salter says her team knew she could not afford to move. So the organization and volunteers worked to restore water service to the trailer.

“I’m always saying we can fix something, so that’s what we set about to do,” Salter says. “So now she can have dishes and wash her hands and take a shower, and her toilet works.”

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
Another grant winner, South Morrow County Seniors Matter, is working to build “disaster resilience,” according to Triplett.

The nonprofit, which offers a free lunch program and other services for older adults, is using its $15,000 grant to provide emergency preparedness training and tools to help older residents respond to disasters, according to cofounder and Chairman Jerry Conklin, 69.

Conklin, a former pastor, lives in Heppner, a town of about 1,200 in Morrow County that’s known as the site of Oregon’s deadliest natural disaster: a 1903 flood that killed 247 people. That catastrophic event, as well as fires in July in the northern part of the county, serve as reminders of the need for disaster preparedness, Conklin says.

The nonprofit’s grant was intended to pay for 200 three-day emergency kits, as well as two emergency preparedness training sessions for older adults — one in the northern part of the county and the other in the south. (The sessions were scheduled for October, after the Bulletin went to press.) The kits were expected to include items such as food, water, a blanket, matches and a flashlight, Conklin says.

Conklin’s goal for the sessions, which were to be led by a state official, was to draw as many as 200 participants. Mobility and medical issues can make it difficult for older residents to respond in an emergency, making the sessions valuable to them.

For more information on grants awarded in 2025, go to aarp.org/communitychallenge.

Julie Rasicot, a writer and editor, writes regularly for the Bulletin.

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