Mutual-Aid & Self-Help Groups

These WhatsApp groups changed my life overnight. I went from struggling to find something to eat and a way to get around to relaxing into the support provided by the care of an Excel sheet.

“Urban Recipe started in 1991 out of one church’s efforts to be in relationship with their community differently beyond the traditional food pantry relationship,” executive director Jeremy Lewis says. Urban Recipe has moved out of that church and now operates and facilitates six food co-ops similar to Co-op 1 and helps operationally support and source food for four additional co-ops in Atlanta that have been through their cooperative pathways training program.

The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936 was arguably the 20th century’s greatest experiment in economic democracy. Seizing the opportunity opened by the conflict between the Spanish Republic and right-wing Nationalists, Spain’s workers and peasants built a new economy in the midst of the chaos. 

In Ghana, a centuries-old financial system called Susu provides an example of effective bottom-up development that contributes meaningfully to reducing poverty and economic inequality.

Equal Care Coop and Clapton Commons are mapping a local landscape of care and support in Clapton Common, Upper Clapton. Using KUMU, a powerful system mapping platform, we are creating an interactive map that makes the often invisible grassroots networks of care and support more visible and accessible to people giving and receiving care.

In this episode, we have an in-depth conversation with Mike Strode, the Founding Coordinator behind an innovative solution that offers just that: The Kola Nut Collaborative.

The People Power Battery Collective in the Bay Area launched a program to provide backup power during emergencies and increase the general understanding of energy access, consumption, and needs.

Venezuela's communes are an attempt to address some of the shortcomings of cooperatives and state-owned socialist factories by addressing not just economic production but other social relationships like parenting and gender relations at the grassroots level.

How might the commons paradigm be applied to cities in a more focused, effective way?  To find some answers, I recently interviewed two leading thinkers and advocates for urban commons, Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione.

“Mutual aid is putting the saying ‘We are all we’ve got’ into practice, and trying to meet some of the survival needs of struggling people, including ourselves, while building community and working towards [long-term] solutions that don’t depend on the state.”