Happy Spring,
Things are moving along beautifully, with lots of exciting work! We are well underway building local activities, with cool news from several of our pilot sites that we’ll share in more detail in a later message, plus reports and outcomes from our February HUMANs summit, new global networks emerging, and more…
But first we have timely news for you —
We’re suspending our regular Mutual Aid Network work groups for the month of April while I travel through New Zealand learning about their great work with savings pools, timebanks, food pools, and more. And see if some of our MAN framework could benefit them. I’ll be starting off by presenting at the Living Economies Expo. Then I’ll travel around the country visiting related projects. Let me know if you know people there I should connect with!
We’ll keep hosting our monthly onboarding web meetings the 4th Friday of each month, 12-2pm CDT. Always check time zones because we do things the hard way here in the USA (daylight savings). First hour is orientation, second hour is training on the Mutual Aid Platform. Join us! Meeting instructions here.
In May we’ll invite you to join us for newly em-biggened (we talk this way now) work groups. Tech, Social, Legal, Communications, Finance. Each with sub-groups. They’re surprisingly fun! And we get a lot done in our hour-long twice-monthly web meetings. Check the calendar for regular meeting times. If you’re interested in a particular work group but can’t make its regular meeting time, let us know at info@mutualaidnetwork.org. Say which work group you’re interested in and your general availability. We’re open to changing meeting times after we reconvene.
Also in May – I’ll be presenting a paper at the IV International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies in Barcelona. It’ll be our fourth time presenting at this conference (Leander Bindewald presented on our behalf last year), where we first launched the project that became Mutual Aid Networks. So it’s near and dear to me. This year’s paper is in progress, working title: Becoming HUMAN: Superversive Strategies in a Time of Fascism and Ecocide.
And, in case you missed it, the new name for our global Mutual Aid Network (formerly the Main MAN) is HUMANs – Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks.
The HUMANs are open for membership. You can join as an individual or as an organization. If you’re an official member of a local MAN pilot site you will automatically be granted membership in the HUMANs global network. And we’re working on plans for member reciprocity and meaningful partnership with other likeminded, complementary organizations and networks. Help shape that in the Social Working Group starting May.
Being a member will give you access to exchanging in our system, gaining knowledge and technical assistance from projects represented there, and participating in related projects. Join today! and then join us for our next orientation on Friday March 24, 12-2pm CDT.
More soon!
Take care,
Stephanie Rearick
Founder and Creative Director, Mutual Aid Networks