Our communities are facing many crises, from worsening climate disasters to fascism. It’s clearer than ever that we need each other to survive and thrive. Building robust and sustainable mutual aid networks is necessary to care for each other and build power. Of course, mutual aid is not new, and neither are the effects of systemic oppression on communities at home or abroad.

After Donald Trump’s re-election in late 2024, Shareable staff saw the pressing need to build skills and pathways for those newly engaged in the shared struggles to come.

Working with our partners and collaborators, we designed a free and virtual mutual aid learning series for early 2025 that featured past writers, organizing partners, and guests from The Response podcast. It became abundantly clear that this training and peer support network was needed when over 1,500 people attended the first session!

To make the learning series as accessible as possible, we’re excited to debut “Mutual Aid 101: Solidarity, Survival, and Resistance,” an introductory toolkit for mutual aid organizing—from starting a group to sustaining it for the long haul.

This toolkit (available digitally on our website and in a PDF format) breaks down the recordings from the four live sessions hosted in February and March 2025. Whether you choose to watch the videos, read the key takeaways and summaries, or a mix of both, we hope this toolkit is helpful for you to start or to fine-tune a sustainable and robust mutual aid group in your community.

There are six sections, each addressing critical aspects of mutual aid organizing. Topics range from foundational and introductory knowledge (We’re all we’ve got—intro to mutual aid) to building mutual aid projects to vital considerations like legal basics, governance, and cybersecurity.

This toolkit is by no means exhaustive. For a deeper dive, check out the Resources section—an aggregated collection crowdsourced by Shareable staff and Mutual Aid 101 learning series presenters and participants!

This toolkit would not have been possible without the incredible presenters from the Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series and support from Emergent Fund, Shift Foundation, Resist, New Economy Coalition, and Shareable supporters like you.

This article originally appeared on Shareable.net.

Teaser image credit: Author supplied.