Livable Communities

Four organizations in the state received 2024 AARP Community Challenge grants, totaling $66,300. The program funds local projects to improve public spaces, housing, transit and civic engagement, among other goals. Nationally, AARP awarded $3.8 million in grants for 343 projects this year.

Since its start in 2017, the AARP Community Challenge program has awarded more than $9 million to some 800 projects around the country. The goal is to provide quick-action grants for communities to work on livability issue.

The use of telehealth—working with patients remotely using video, patient portals or texting—worked well during weeks of stay-at-home restrictions.

AARP South Carolina awarded two Community Challenge grants to foster improvements in two communities.

When disaster hits, AARP and AARP Foundation are there. They met the goal of $500,000 in matching donations to help victims of Hurricane Florence, ensuring that $1 million will go to relief and recovery efforts.

As the U.S. population ages and people stay healthy and active longer, communities must work to adapt. AARP’s Network of Age-Friendly Communities is a comprehensive approach to helping us prepare for aging communities. The goal of Age Friendly Communities is to increase the number of communities that support healthy aging, which will improve the health, well-being, satisfaction and quality of life for older Americans.

Dr. Bill Thomas, one of the most innovative and creative thinkers working in medicine today, brings a radical new approach to growth and aging through his modern day American Chautauqua movement the Age of Disruption Tour. Barnstorming the country in a rock n’ roll tour bus, Dr. Bill Thomas is engaging with communities passion building new and vastly more rewarding visions of aging.

See a need, meet a need!

Senior citizens in South Carolina will soon benefit from a program that will help them better manage their utility bills by making their homes more energy efficient, thanks to a $1 million donation from Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC). In the DEC 2013 rate case settlement agreement, the utility agreed to make a shareholder contribution of $1 million to support senior-citizen outreach.