Mission: Help people connect with a mutual aid network in their community
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When the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person town halls impossible, the Town Hall Project team applied the same skills — volunteer research, data wrangling, and map visualization — to a new urgent need. Mutual aid networks were forming rapidly across the country, but there was no easy way for people to find one nearby or learn how to start their own.
Mutual Aid Hub maps mutual aid networks and food resources nationwide on a searchable interactive map built with React, Mapbox, and Google Firestore. A team of volunteers researched and collected contact information for networks across the country; the site made that data publicly accessible and kept it current. Beyond connecting people to existing resources, the project organized community events to help people who wanted to start networks in neighborhoods that didn't yet have one.
Visit the live site

Research ​

A team of volunteers started collecting data on mutual aid networks contact information. 

The site

The site itself shows locations of networks and food resources on a searchable map. The data is stored in a Google Firestore database, and the map is built using Mapbox. The site itself is built using React and published on Github pages. 

Building community

A really common question we'd get asked is "There is no network in my neighborhood, how do I start one?". We are not mutual aid network experts, so we organized events to connect people to each other. This was largely the work of Shivani Desai, who joined Town Hall Project as the Mutual Aid Hub Organizer.