Golden Paths and Generational Bridges in Newark: AARP Community Challenge
Golden Paths & Generational Bridges in Newark was a storytelling and community engagement initiative centered on Newark older adults’ lived experiences navigating a changing transportation landscape.
The New Jersey Bike & Walk Coalition (NJBWC) received a 2025 AARP Community Challenge grant—a quick-action grant designed to make communities more livable for residents of all ages, especially those 50 and older. The grant supports projects that improve public spaces, transportation, housing, digital connections, and community resilience.
AARP recognizes that while strong communities take time to build, quick, tangible actions can spark lasting change. This grant supported NJBWC in taking those meaningful steps in Newark, elevating older adults’ voices in mobility conversations, fostering connections across generations, and documenting lived experiences to help inform a more inclusive and connected transportation landscape.
Why Newark?
Newark’s 50-plus residents have seen their city transform—its streets, transportation systems, and neighborhoods evolving over time. Their lived experiences provide valuable insight into mobility challenges and opportunities, yet they are often excluded from discussions on infrastructure and active transportation planning. Despite making up 18-19% of Newark’s population, their mobility needs are frequently overlooked in decision-making.
Throughout this project, older adults have shared concerns about the changing transportation landscape, from the introduction of e-scooters to gaps in safe walking and cycling infrastructure. These shifts impact safety, mobility, and overall perception of active travel, sometimes creating tension between different modes of transportation.
With major infrastructure investments—such as The Greenway (formerly Essex-Hudson Greenway), the North Jersey Trail Network Initiative, and the City of Newark’s BikeNewark Plan, this project helped ensure older adults’ perspectives were documented and elevated as part of Newark’s mobility story, not as an afterthought, but as a critical source of lived knowledge.
Language & Respect
Throughout this project, participants in Newark shared that they prefer the term “seasoned citizens” over “senior citizens.” In keeping with their preference while maintaining clarity, this page uses “older adults” when referring to participants.
Laying the Groundwork for Long-Term Change
This initiative was more than just mobility planning—it honored lived experiences, strengthened community connections, and helped lay the groundwork for a Newark that works for everyone.
Through thoughtful, community engagement this work came to life in several ways.
Intergenerational Storytelling
We centered intergenerational storytelling by partnering with the Media Girls, a leadership subgroup of Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey, in collaboration with staff at the Girl Scouts Leadership Center in Newark. We provided interview training and storytelling guidance, while the Media Girls developed their own questions and approach. Through this youth-led process, the students conducted interviews with older adults in their own lives, resulting in written and video interviews that explored aging, mobility, and lived experience across generations.
Intergenerational Storytelling Spotlight
Jasmine, an 11-year-old Media Girl, interviewed her grandparents (with videography support from her parents) capturing a deeply personal conversation about aging, vision loss, and how these changes impact mobility – including hopes for shared adaptive ways to move together. This conversation reflects the heart of Golden Paths & Generational Bridges, how stories live within families, and how youth play a vital role in listening, documenting, and carrying them forward.
Adaptive Mobility in Action
During the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair, we demonstrated adaptive mobility in practice, as many older adults (including Jasmine’s grandfather) tried an electric trike (e-trike), offering a real-world example of how adaptive mobility options can support safety, confidence, and shared movement for people with changing abilities.
The October 23 Senior Mobility Fair
We brought mobility conversations directly to older adults through a large-scale Senior Mobility Fair at JFK Recreation Center on October 23, 2025, welcoming more than 500 older adults from all five wards, with transportation coordinated by the City of Newark Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs & Senior Services alongside Newark City Council members and Mayor Ras J. Baraka.
We created opportunities for older adults to learn about and discuss different ways of getting around Newark, including walking, transit, and options like electric trikes (e-trikes), while also sharing information about major projects shaping the city’s future. Many older adults learned for the first time that Phase 1 of The Greenway has broken ground in Newark and is expected to open by the end of 2026, all within a joyful, welcoming environment featuring music, light movement, and hands-on activities.
Capturing Stories & Reflections
We captured older adults’ stories in real time during the fair through on-site video interviews led by Redens Desrosiers, and shadowed by the Girl Scouts Media Girls documenting reflections on mobility, neighborhood change, and what a safer, more connected Newark means to those who have lived and moved through the city for decades.
We supplemented in-person engagement with a short survey, offering older adults an additional way to share insights about mobility, safety, and access beyond live conversations and interviews.
We brought the community together by hosting a celebration gathering that allowed older adults, youth, and partners together to view a selection of the completed stories and portraits, reflect on what was shared, and honor the contributions of everyone who helped bring the project to life.
We created a lasting visual record through a portrait photo series with several Newark older adults, creating a dignified visual record of their stories, identities, and lived experiences navigating the city over time.
Senior Mobility Fair Highlights
To capture the energy and voices of the day, we created a short recap video highlighting moments from the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair at JFK Recreation Center, including on-site conversations and interviews with older adults.
Stories from Newark’s Seasoned Citizens
The video stories below share a selection of individual reflections gathered through Golden Paths & Generational Bridges in Newark, capturing lived experiences navigating the city’s changing transportation landscape, shaped by decades of movement, memory, and neighborhood change.
These stories are shared with permission and are intended to be experienced in their full context. They represent a portion of the voices shared through this project.
Geraldine Brown
Anna Ellis
Joan Ross
Mae Smith
Selena Stevenson
Curtis Williams
A Legacy Rooted in Community
As part of Golden Paths & Generational Bridges in Newark, NJBWC created a portrait series honoring Newark’s older adults who generously shared their stories and perspectives.
The videos are shared online to amplify older adults’ voices and lived experiences, while the portrait series was created for public display throughout Newark so their presence can be seen and felt by the broader community.
By sharing these stories locally, Newark can continue to:
- Honor older adults as neighborhood historians
- Strengthen connections across generations
- Keep accessibility, dignity, and safety at the forefront of mobility conversations
If your organization is interested in hosting the portrait series or incorporating these stories into community programming, please contact: Tiffany Robinson, Trails and Active Mobility Director, Tiffany.Robinson@njbwc.org.
Thanks & Acknowledgments
This project was made possible with the support of:
- AARP New Jersey, for supplemental event support in connection with the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair.
- Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey Leadership Center in Newark, for supporting youth participation in this project and hosting the project’s culminating celebration.
- Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey Media Girls, for facilitating interviews and participating in both the Senior Mobility Fair and the project’s culminating celebration.
- City of Newark Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs & Senior Services, for their essential partnership in making the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair possible, including support for senior transportation, event space, décor, photography, music and the senior center coordinators who helped connect the project team with interview participants.
- Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, for sharing a personalized video message to our older adults in support of the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair.
- Mayor Ras J. Baraka and members of the Newark City Council, for joining the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair and engaging with Newark residents.
- The community partners and mobility vendors who shared resources, information, and expertise at the October 23 Senior Mobility Fair.
- The “seasoned citizens” who generously shared their time, wisdom, and warmth.
We extend our deepest appreciation. This project belongs to you, Newark.
Funding
This project was funded by a grant from AARP.
Read the Press Release
Project Partners
