Community Safety Network Cohort
A Collaborative Learning and Resource Building Cohort to Promote Community-based Responses to Needs for Care, Crisis Support, and Instances of Harm
Eight participants will come together regularly to collaborate, learn & review the roots of mutual aid, and build on relationships locally to determine community needs and priorities. Together, this cohort will strategize to create community-based, abolitionist, harm reduction-informed resources and safety planning tools, and take action in alignment with mutual aid, transformative, and harm reduction oriented concepts.
Out in the Open brings experience supporting the creation and development of safety plans on small and larger scales, and related network building such as: COVID-19 mutual aid networks, event and community specific safety and de-escalation planning, strategy and implementation of programs that reduce harm in medical and prison systems, and ongoing practice of antiracist organizing and activism.
Together and individually, participants will identify opportunities for relationship building and moving forward to build new or strengthening existing structures for ongoing safety planning and support networks.
Some examples of what this could entail: facilitating the creation of and training to support a rapid/ready response network, curating workshops and trainings about safety interventions (bystanders, Narcan, de-escalation, layered covid protection, the implications of calling 988), creating a network to offer community safety teams as community events, as well as facilitating and hosting workshops and trainings that grapple with the topics above.
Before the start of the fellowship, participants will receive copies of two books* and a reading & resource packet to develop shared language and to reflect together. There will be two virtual sessions in May to discuss the materials provided.
There will be a day-long kick off retreat in June 2024. This cohort will gather monthly for 2 - 3 hours, and will be expected to follow up with each other to complete tasks and carry out deeper planning together. In addition to participants’ projects and events, there will be a late-Autumn gathering for participants of all previous and present fellowship cohorts.
This fellowship cohort is for you if:
working in a small, collaborative group to further a big goal is exciting to you.
you have experience with self-directed and open-ended projects.
you are curious about the experiences of others and are willing to share from your lived experience.
have an affinity for harm reduction practices or an interest in learning more about how this concept can be applied to social movement work.
you are ready to commit to and prioritize monthly meetings with your cohort.
you identify as LGBTQ+ and live openly with this identity.
you want to strengthen our local communities’ ability to support safety.
you are thinking about how queerness intersects with other aspects of your identity and the identities of other people.
you rurally north and west of Portland/Brunswick and outside of urban areas of Bangor, Augusta, and Waterville in Wabanaki territory/Maine.
*Discussion materials may include adrienne maree brown‘s We Will Not Cancel Us, and Shira Hassan’s Painting the Ocean and the Sky as well as a multimedia packet.
