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How to Make your Community Space into a Hub for Local Resilience and Mutual Aid

Introduction

This 12-page guide introduces the vision and model of a resilience hub, a place where neighbours can deepen a sense of belonging, learn new skills together, provide for basic needs, prepare for disasters, and build a more inclusive and joyful community.

This guide was put together by Shareable, an award-winning nonprofit news, action and connection hub for sharing transformation.

Nobody knows everything, but together we know a lot. Some of us are experienced teachers, some of us are eager learners, and many of us are both. When it comes to building a resilience hub with our neighbors, learning our day-to-day needs helps make life better now as well as in the event of an emergency. By combining our unique abilities, we can overcome greater challenges and grow. p.8

The Resilience we Want

This is a guide to making any space into a hub for resilience & mutual aid. We created this guide as a companion to “The Response,” Shareable’s documentary film about people restoring power after a disaster in Puerto Rico.

This guide introduces the vision and model of a “resilience hub” – a space where people can take more pride in their neighborhood, learn new skills together, provide for basic needs, prepare for disruptions, and build a more inclusive and joyful community.

After seeing our friends restoring power and building resilience in Puerto Rico, we began searching for more stories. Tom Llewellyn, producer of The Response, got inspired by Susan Silber and workshops promoting the Northern California Resilience Network. And in the summer of 2019, Shareable partnered with Danny Spitzberg, a sociologist based in Oakland, to turn this inspiration into a practical form.

Danny interviewed, brought together, and learned from dozens of people organizing with spaces around the world, from Oakland, California to Kathmandu, Nepal, as well as disaster response strategists, local government officials, and community leaders. Danny wrote and prototyped two versions of the guide. Erica Ruth Dixon, a communications strategist based in San Francisco, created a look and feel. And dozens of participants provided feedback on how it might be useful for their community space.

It is mainly for people with access to spaces they love, such as:

  • Independent spaces – social clubs, art studios, and urban farms
  • Public facilities – libraries, schools, athletic clubs, and civic centers
  • Religious centers – places of worship, meeting houses, and more
  • Small businesses – cafes, bookshops, and all kinds of storefronts

To help you and your neighbors make your space into a hub for resilience and mutual aid, the guide includes

  • Six key strategies for co-creating a vision and plan for your space
  • Six case studies of people are building resilience hubs in different ways
  • Instructions on how to co-host your first and second gatherings
  • A checklist to get started with your neighbors.

Contents

  • The resilience we want
  • The response in Puerto Rico
  • How to use this guide
    • 1. Finding inspiration
    • 2. Seeing the magic
    • 3. Combining our abilities
    • 4. Learning how to help
    • 5. Investing in assets
    • 6. Working in cycles
  • Checklist

Organizing skills give a community the capacity to build a vision that actually works. -p. 9

Excerpt

Here is a sneak peek into the guide.

Screenshot from the guide 'How to Make your Community Space into a Hub for Local Resilience and Mutual Aid'.
Screenshot from the guide 'How to Make your Community Space into a Hub for Local Resilience and Mutual Aid'.

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How to Make your Community Space into a Hub for Local Resilience and Mutual Aid (PDF)

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