The New Jersey Age-Friendly Grants Program was a 15-month-long initiative with two primary objectives. The first was to seed and strengthen age-friendly community-building efforts in towns and counties across the state. The second was to spark innovative new projects addressing the goals and recommendations laid out in the New Jersey Age-Friendly Blueprint. The grants were funded by the NJ Department of Human Services, Division of Aging Services, and administered by the Public Health Policy group of the Rutgers Bloustein School's Center for Urban Policy Research.
The work of each individual grantee is detailed in the articles below.
In addition, the program produced two helpful digital data tools for community leaders engaging in age-friendly work. The Age Friendly New Jersey Mapping Tool features regional assets that support age-friendly work and the Aging & Disability Snapshot is a dashboard displaying municipal and county-level data about older adults and people with disabilities.
Bergen County has been a hub of age-friendly planning and leadership for more than a decade. Five of its communities were among the first towns in New Jersey to launch age-friendly community initiatives. Four other municipalities and the County itself have since joined ...
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Bergen County
New community connections and new coalitions. Those have been some of the immediate benefits from the launch of Age-Friendly Leonia, a community initiative that had been percolating for several years and then gained steam after being selected for a New Jersey Age-Friend...
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Outreach to older residents is challenging, even in a community with a vibrant, active and well-resourced senior center. Leaders of Age-Friendly Mahwah decided to take that challenge head-on by bringing programming and resource education outside the doors of the senior ...
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Ocean County is often considered New Jersey’s retirement hub—and for good reason. Nearly one in four residents is age 65 or older, making it one of the state’s oldest counties. Spanning 916 square miles from the Pine Barrens to the Atlantic coastline, the ...
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Sustaining an age-friendly movement takes as much commitment as sparking one. That’s the chief takeaway from Princeton’s efforts to make an already age-friendly community even stronger through what project leaders are calling “Age-Friendly Princeton ...
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Age-friendly movements can take shape in all sorts of ways, often steered by government entities, nonprofit organizations or academic institutions. In Bernards Township, a budding new age-friendly community initiative is led by the leaders of a local YMCA in partnership...
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Hunterdon, Monmouth, Middlesex, Ocean and Somerset counties
When generations come together through mentorship, everyone has something to gain. That was the message of the 18-month-long age-friendly project undertaken by the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Coastal & Northern New Jersey (BBBSCNNJ). And it was also the ou...
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Borough of Bound Brook (Somerset County)
Senior Fitness and Wellness Program. That was the name of the age-friendly grant project undertaken by the Borough of Bound Brook, and yes, one goal was to promote fitness, and another to promote wellness. But underlying both of those goals was a loftier mission, more o...
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Cape May County has the highest percentage of people over age 65 of any region in New Jersey – with its year-round senior citizen population now outnumbering the children in its schools. For a tourism-rich county whose summertime inhabitants swell to as many as 820,00...
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Plentiful multi-family, senior and affordable housing options. Multiple transportation options. Walkable neighborhoods. Close vicinity to parks, libraries and cultural institutions. Ample opportunities for civic engagement. These are some of the high grades that Cliffsi...
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Surveying vulnerable populations about their daily struggles and hopes for the future is a delicate undertaking. To better understand the challenges faced by aging residents in Paterson and food-insecure older adults in Passaic County, the nonprofit leading this age-fri...
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Statewide
In designing a transportation program that fully meets the needs of older-adult riders, two considerations are paramount – affordability and ease-of-use. EZ Ride, a Northern New Jersey-based nonprofit, has been working to perfect such a model for decades. The orga...
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Bergen County
For anyone who thinks the generational gap between high school kids and senior citizens is an uncrossable chasm, the Borough of Fair Lawn can offer some bridge-building lessons. This past spring, as planning was underway for what would be this Bergen County town’s 5th...
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For a town small in both land area and population, the borough of Frenchtown built an impressively large age-friendly coalition, followed by some concrete steps to improve communication and livability for its older residents. “Over the course of our Age-Friendly initi...
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It’s hard to plan for a community’s future when some people are missing from the conversation. In embarking on its age-friendly community planning project, Hillside Township’s leaders decided they needed a strategy for making sure they received input from a divers...
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Hudson County
Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties
A transportation program for older adults needs to be reliable, affordable and – most of all – make the rider feel safe and comfortable. The Senior Rides program that Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey (JFSNJ) created through its age-friendly...
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Police departments are not usually at the helm of an age-friendly community initiative. But in Lodi, Police Lt. Javier Hernandez has been leading the borough’s efforts to survey the town’s older residents and devise an age-friendly action plan. In doing so, Hernande...
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Streamlining communications, hiring a dedicated staff member devoted to “human services,” and establishing more formal collaborations on municipal planning goals. These are among the recommendations derived from the age-friendly needs assessment that officials in Mo...
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Dover (Morris County)
Making sure that every guest feels welcomed and valued is no easy task for any party host. If the party is intended for older residents – some of whom might lack transportation, have physical limitations, speak another language or suffer depression brought on by a...
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As the population ages so too will New Jersey’s workforce, making it essential that employers learn how to transform their workplaces into more inclusive and supportive environments for older workers. That’s why New Jersey Advocates for Aging Well (NJAAW) designed a...
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Passaic County
In a car-centric state like New Jersey, residents can live most of their lives without using or even learning about the transit systems serving their communities. Then, if a day comes when an illness, a disability or advanced age forces them to limit or give up dr...
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Ocean County
Sometimes it takes more than adding a ramp or installing grab bars to make older residents safe and secure in their longtime homes. For nearly a decade, Northern Ocean Habitat for Humanity has adopted a holistic approach to helping older homeowners age-in-plac...
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Bergen County
In mapping the path to an age-friendly future, the borough of Oradell should seek to strengthen coordination between two of the community’s key assets – its library and its senior center, both of which serve as a resource and a social outlet for many older resid...
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Borough of Paramus (Bergen County)
Promoting health and wellness and creating age-friendly public spaces are among the many goals outlined in New Jersey’s Age-Friendly Blueprint. The Borough of Paramus was awarded a grant to achieve both of those goals through a project that expanded wellness programmi...
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Sometime In the next decade, 1 out of every 5 people in New Jersey will be over the age of 65. The Township of Toms River has already passed that milestone, and if this Ocean County community’s experience is a harbinger of what’s to come, increasing transportation o...
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Verona is slightly older than New Jersey as a whole, with many residents having spent most of their lives in this Essex County suburb known for its superior parks, walking trails and recreational amenities. With more than 1 in 5 Verona residents now over age 65, establi...
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