Building Community Power Using the Principles of Mutual Aid
Location
Price, UT
Start Date
5-13-2025 9:00 AM
Description
Globally, many communities are fragmented and struggling to have their needs met. One strategy to meet local needs is to adopt a bottom-up approach, working within communities to build power. This strategy is especially effective because it allows people to make decisions around issues impacting them directly and forge critical connections with one another. Mutual aid offers a framework for establishing power by mobilizing community members to support one another based on solidarity and reciprocal relationships, which can be adapted to many different contexts. Here, we will turn the basic principles of mutual aid into an interactive roundtable in which participants will discuss their experiences with community engagement and consider how we can work toward building community power through our engagement. Although mutual aid is not applicable in every situation, we, as practitioners, should push ourselves to adopt the core idea that we are part of the communities we serve. By approaching all conversations and actions with that basis in mind, we can forge strong connections on equal ground and not just amplify community voices, but collaborate to create spaces where all voices are valued and amplification is not needed. One of the best ways to push ourselves to go farther with our community engagement is to engage in critical, self-reflective conversations with each other, which is the goal of this roundtable discussion.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Building Community Power Using the Principles of Mutual Aid
Price, UT
Globally, many communities are fragmented and struggling to have their needs met. One strategy to meet local needs is to adopt a bottom-up approach, working within communities to build power. This strategy is especially effective because it allows people to make decisions around issues impacting them directly and forge critical connections with one another. Mutual aid offers a framework for establishing power by mobilizing community members to support one another based on solidarity and reciprocal relationships, which can be adapted to many different contexts. Here, we will turn the basic principles of mutual aid into an interactive roundtable in which participants will discuss their experiences with community engagement and consider how we can work toward building community power through our engagement. Although mutual aid is not applicable in every situation, we, as practitioners, should push ourselves to adopt the core idea that we are part of the communities we serve. By approaching all conversations and actions with that basis in mind, we can forge strong connections on equal ground and not just amplify community voices, but collaborate to create spaces where all voices are valued and amplification is not needed. One of the best ways to push ourselves to go farther with our community engagement is to engage in critical, self-reflective conversations with each other, which is the goal of this roundtable discussion.