We’re connecting communities of cooperative economic practice, and building tools to support them.

While people need cooperation we’ve fallen out of practice. The work of the Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks is to create favorable conditions for cooperation and an open welcoming invitation to everyone to engage.

In order to re-learn a cooperative attitude, trust is a must. Therefore trust is an individual and collective journey. It needs time, with personalized steps, sharing of successes and failures, experiential learning, transparency, skills, knowledge, tools, and also access to decision-making and the profit-risk equation. Actions and demonstrations of success are needed to build real trust which drives to spontaneous cooperation. Active practices of mutually beneficial cooperation create healthy community ties, a sense of belonging, and opportunities to build common ground across difference.

Our project connects several community projects. We’ll focus on building and strengthening a grassroots renewable energy production coop in France (part of a 70 coop network), a food and health network in Madison Wisconsin, a mesh network in Kenya, and a healthy food coop in Slovenia which acts also as the hub for our project management and accounting software, all engaged in and building up a global network of peer support, communications and tech tools, plus mutual aid among members.

Our practices include frequent local gatherings offering a variety of ways to participate, to appeal to a variety of people. Meals, work days, gardening, Peace Practice open dialogues, skillshares and workshops are held in person in each location. Other learning tools we develop and use include games plus in-person and online activities. We share video and written documentation of our projects and processes.

In addition, we’re collaborating to use and improve on software for communication, project management, coop administration and mutual aid accounting. We develop and share practices of moving money, knowledge, materials, and other resources between communities, from those who have more access to particular resources to those who need them, helping communities to discover and share their real wealth and capacity.
While we do this in individual communities, we’re building infrastructure for multi-lingual, international, cross-demographic collaboration and learning. We can exponentially increase the positive outcomes we see in each individual community via sharing inspiration, learning, experience, knowledge, and material goods.