The Madison MAN (Mutual Aid Network) Cooperative is building community resilience and self-sufficiency. We're activating a network of mutual aid that includes project development, skill-building, and sharing and exchange mechanisms. These include timebanking, sharing, and money pooling, plus cooperative governance. Active projects include:
EveryWhere Gardens where we work collectively on the garden space of members who need help, building skills and sharing the bounty. This includes using and increasing access to commonly held tools and supplies.
Our budding Health + Care Network adopts models from other partner communities and is building our capacity to support people with disabilities, aging bodies, injuries, or illness, with the kinds of care they need. Our current priority is establishing Community Care Teams - read more and/or sign up here.
Community education is woven through all of these activities, each of which is open to the public at large and each of which creates opportunities for all the participants to decide together on their learning journey. We maintain a living archive of community learning sessions via shared recordings.
All of these activities earn the participants hour credits (timebanking) and we regularly offer swaps where members can exchange what they have for what they need, so members begin to engage in more reciprocal acts, building the community network, building skills and leadership, and building economic resilience. Every participant is a member, with a say in the governance and a stake in the ownership.
Feel free to join anything you see at our calendar.
Fill out this easy 2-minute survey to let us know how you'd like to be involved!