Has your community experienced a disaster? Do you need to have difficult conversations and build individual and community resilience?
The Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Workshop Facilitation Guide is designed to help communities and individuals that have experienced disaster and want to take action themselves in building their own resilience. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a grassroots disaster relief network in the US based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. This guide is a living document designed to share insights and lessons learned from past iterations of grassroots d.i.y. humanitarian aid projects. This template developed over 2018/19 has been developed for facilitators to spark more local conversations about mutual aid survival programs. The ideas and tips have been gathered from over 30 communities around the US.
Download the facilitation guide PDF from the box at the bottom of this page.
“We are not afraid of ruins. Our opposition might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history… We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.” – Buenaventura Durruti
Introduction
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief was founded to amplify and support community’s abilities to meet their own needs during and after disasters through a d.i.y. ethic rooted in solidarity. To get a pulse on community aspirations and challenges, to build deeper relationships with the ever-growing network, and to share insights and lessons learned from past iterations of grassroots d.i.y. humanitarian aid projects, we engaged in a 30 city training tour in Spring 2018.
On our tour, we divided our visit into two events. The first was an evening of storytelling, accompanied by Beehive Collective graphics, to illustrate 500+ years of colonization on this continent, a central disaster in which all environmental and industrial calamities are rooted, with historic and contemporary examples of disaster capitalism and mutual aid. The second event was an interactive, popular education-style workshop that challenged community members to join us in difficult conversations while also inviting participation and welcoming all experience levels through fun games and fast-paced exercises. This guide breaks down the flow of the interactive portion.
It is important to note that this is a living document. What you are reading now is a rough draft, and it is only one version of how this could be done. The current tour team is making many changes as they work with different groups and integrate lessons and feedback, and surely you have lots of good ideas too – let’s keep developing this curriculum together!
We hope that this template for facilitators can spark conversations about mutual aid survival programs unique to your local area; it’s just getting the conversation started. Whether future disasters become focal points for the powerful to entrench policies that uphold their privilege and political, social, and economic control or whether they become opportunities to build more empowered and resilient individuals and communities that strengthen our movements for radical social change is up to us and the choices we make.
Contents
- Introduction
- Hosting a workshop – Tips for getting a good turnout
- Intersectional facilitation – An introduction
- Setting up your workshop – tips on how to best utilize this curriculum
- Wall Notes and Workshop Processes:
- 12 Gratitude, Land Acknowledge
- 14 Inclusive Language
- 16 Community Agreements
- 19 Learning Goals
- 20 Slogans
- 2i Agenda
- 23 Popular Education
- 26 Core Values
- 29 What Is Mutual Aid?
- 31 Historic Examples
- Wobblies
- Catholic Workers
- Black Panthers
- Los Topos
- 9/11 New York City
- Common Ground
- Occupy Sandy
- 34 Lessons Learned
- 38 Madr Vision
- 40 Charity Or Solidarity?
- 44 Matrix Of Domination
- 46 Force Fields
- 48 Coming In A Good Way
- 50 Anti-Oppression & Accessibility
- 54 Phases Of Disasters Recovery
- 57 Phases
- 60 Disasters & Hazards
- 63 Responding
- 67 Community Care
- 70 Burnout
- 71 Healing
- 73 Affinity Groups
- 75 Who Else Is Responding?
- 78 Breakdown To Breakthrough
- 80 Future Trainings And Skills We Can Share
- Games:
- 25 Step In
- 30 Speed Round 1
- 41 Speed Round 2
- 42 Spectragram
- 52 Musical Chairs
- 81 Yarn Web Conversation-starter
- Exercises and Tools:
- 45 Matrix of Domination
- 47 Force Fields
- 59 Hopes & Fears
- 61 Connection Map: Disasters & Hazards
- 77 Breakout Groups
Download PDF from the box below.