Mutual Aid Hub
When COVID-19 lockdowns hit and mutual aid networks were forming faster than anyone could track, the Town Hall Project team pivoted to build a tool to help people find — and start — networks in their communities.
Mutual aid networks were appearing overnight in neighborhoods across the country, but there was no way to find them. People who wanted to help couldn't locate their local network; people who needed help couldn't either. We built Mutual Aid Hub to solve the discovery problem.
Help people find each other first. Everything else follows.
I built the application using React, Mapbox, and Google Firestore, with a volunteer researcher team maintaining the underlying data. The map covered mutual aid networks and food resources nationwide and updated continuously as new networks formed.
Beyond the map, we saw a second need: many communities didn't have a network yet. We organized events connecting people who wanted to start one with others in their area, turning the tool from a directory into a community-building platform.