America Walks’ Spring Membership Drive is May 12-23, 2025! As we welcome new and returning members, and thank current members for upping their monthly donations, we’re proud to continue our work in supporting walkable communities.
America Walks members are crucial to powering the advocacy, organizing, and solutions we need to defend and expand walkability for all. Our members:
- Support grassroots efforts that make real change
- Join a nationwide network working towards safe, walkable, and vibrant communities
- Help protect our communities facing funding threats
Here’s a look at some of the work our members directly fund with their donations:
Communities Over Highways
America Walks is proud to host Communities Over Highways, a nationwide coalition of over 200 federal, state, and local organizations calling for investments in communities, not more highway expansion. The last two Communities Over Highways Summits brought together grassroots advocates from around the U.S. to learn from each other and continue to build a national movement.
Learn more about this year’s Communities Over Highways Summit.
Week Without Driving
America Walks nationally launched Week Without Driving, an annual initiative that trains local advocates on building momentum around transportation, disability justice, health, housing, climate change, and other intersecting issues to bring attention to the challenges experienced by those who don’t drive — roughly 30% of the U.S. population. Week Without Driving also trains elected officials to better understand their non-driving constituencies.
Thousands of individuals, over 700 elected officials, and more than 500 organizations have joined Week Without Driving, demonstrating its growing collective power to shift the conversation about how we move and building more equitable, sustainable, and safe transportation systems.
This year’s Week Without Driving will run September 29–October 5, 2025.
National Walking College
The National Walking College is an educational program geared towards community champions working to expand access to walkable, vibrant, safe, and accessible places. Selected annually, Walking College fellows hone in to address a problem in their community, develop knowledge and skills to help bring about positive change, and engage with mentors and peers to create a plan of action.
Over 500 advocates working across the country have completed the program, learning the basics of advocacy and organizing as well as impactful ways to make their communities more walkable.
Community Change Grants
The Community Change Grants program supports a growing network of community champions, organizations, and agencies working to advance walkability. Grants are awarded to innovative and engaging programs and projects that create change and opportunity for walking and movement at the community level.
Through the generosity of Active People, Healthy Nation partners, this annual program awards six grants to communities for projects related to creating healthy, active, and engaged places to live, work, and play. The grant recipients for the latest round of the program were recently announced. We have also expanded the program to include 15 grants for similar projects that are funded by General Motors.
Improving Safety
America Walks believes that safety is key to ensuring people can move freely in their communities. Over the last few years, we led a public push to revise the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the federal manual governing street design. That revision helped to enact changes that make it easier to build crosswalks, set lower speed limits, and prioritize pedestrian safety on every street in the country.
We also created the Safer Fleets campaign to encourage government-owned vehicle fleets to use the safest possible vehicles. New York City; Ventura County, California; Somerville, Massachusetts; and Washington, D.C. are currently retrofitting their vehicles with intelligent speed assistance, with more jurisdictions researching the opportunity for safer streets. Additionally, we’ve campaigned and won a federal regulatory change that requires pedestrian detection and automatic braking in all new vehicles.
And let’s not forget about our successful campaigns to decriminalize unfair jaywalking laws in Virginia, California, Nevada, Kansas City, New York City, and Anchorage!
Working With Communities
At America Walks, we prioritize working directly with the communities that transportation and mobility issues directly affect.
We have assisted advocates in Minneapolis, Rochester, Albany, Seattle, San Francisco, and Tulsa in applying for and winning federal Reconnecting Communities grants. We’ve also worked with state-level coalitions in Minnesota, California, and Illinois to develop plans to reduce climate emissions from transportation.
America Walks has provided technical assistance to Yuma, Arizona, and the Navajo Nation to help apply for and win federal Safe Streets for All planning grants, and we’ve provided personalized assistance to cities, towns, and advocacy organizations on how to apply for similar federal grants.
Our work is only getting started! Become an America Walks member today by donating here.
