2025 CAFE Highlights
CAFE Year in Review 2025:
From Relationships to Research to Roadmaps
In 2025, the Center for Age-Friendly Excellence (CAFE) continued its work alongside communities across San Mateo County to help make places more inclusive, connected, and livable for people of all ages. Rooted in collaboration and guided by community voices, CAFE’s work this year focused on turning listening, learning, and research into meaningful plans for action.
This was a year of building on trust, strengthening partnerships, and translating shared priorities into clear, community-driven roadmaps for change.
Turning Community Voices into Action Plans
Throughout 2025, CAFE partnered with four San Mateo County cities — Belmont, Half Moon Bay, Millbrae, and South San Francisco — to develop Age-Friendly City Action Plans shaped by local input and informed by proven age-friendly frameworks.
These Action Plans reflect each city’s unique character, needs, and priorities, while also advancing a shared goal: supporting residents to age safely, actively, and with dignity.
What Is an Age-Friendly City Action Plan?
An Age-Friendly City Action Plan is a practical, forward-looking framework that helps cities identify how they can better support older adults, people with disabilities, and residents of all ages. Informed by models from the World Health Organization (WHO) and AARP Livable Communities, these plans focus on areas such as housing, transportation, social connection, health, and civic participation.
What makes each plan meaningful is the process behind it. Every Action Plan is grounded in community assessment and shaped by the lived experiences of residents. By listening carefully to community members, cities are able to identify priorities that matter most and take steps that improve everyday life for people across generations.
A Community-Centered Way of Working
CAFE’s approach to age-friendly planning centers on connection and collaboration. In 2025, the Action Plan process brought together residents, community-based organizations, city staff, elected officials, and nonprofit partners to work across sectors and perspectives.
CAFE prioritized inclusive engagement by reaching residents across languages, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds, helping ensure that voices often left out of planning conversations were heard and valued. Along the way, CAFE served as both an educator and a connector — supporting communities through facilitation, research, and shared learning to strengthen relationships and build local capacity.
Gathering, Learning, and Building Momentum
In addition to its planning work, CAFE convened communities through regional age-friendly workshops designed to share ideas, highlight local efforts, and build momentum across San Mateo County.
Two signature events stood out in 2025:
Brisbane’s Light Up Your Life Age-Friendly Workshop
(November 12, 2025)
Hosted in partnership with the City of Brisbane, this workshop brought together residents, service providers, elected officials, and experts to explore ways to reduce isolation, support well-being, and strengthen social connection. The event created space for reflection, learning, and conversation about what it means to build more connected communities.
Daly City’s Light Up Your Health Age-Friendly Workshop
(May 13, 2025)
Held in Daly City, this workshop focused on health, and access to services and community-based supports that help people of all ages thrive. Participants explored how collaboration across sectors can address both physical and social factors that shape health and quality of life.
Together, these gatherings reinforced the importance of coming together — across cities and roles — to learn from one another and move age-friendly ideas into action.
What This Work Made Possible
CAFE’s 2025 efforts helped advance age-friendly change in tangible ways, including:
raising awareness about the importance of age-friendly planning
strengthening collaboration between cities, counties, and community organizations
informing policies and programs that support aging well
building a foundation for long-term implementation
Perhaps most importantly, the relationships formed through this work created momentum that extends beyond any single plan or event.
Looking Ahead to 2026
As communities move from planning to implementation, the work completed in 2025 provides a strong foundation for continued progress. The relationships built, insights gathered, and Action Plans developed this year reflect a growing commitment across San Mateo County to creating communities where people of all ages can thrive.
Looking ahead to 2026, there is clear momentum and opportunity. With cities prepared to advance age-friendly strategies and deepen collaboration, CAFE remains committed to supporting positive, community-driven change, helping turn plans into action and shared goals into lasting impact for generations to come.