Vigo County Mutual Aid: COVID-19 Response

This is the Vigo County, Indiana and adjacent areas group for mutual aid and community support actions. It was first created by ISU social work graduate students in March of 2020 as a response to the many vulnerable citizens of Vigo County that were impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic health crisis.

Our goal is to foster a network of collective solidarity that allows us to care for the most sick and vulnerable people in our community, to find strength and resilience together, and to create a centralized space where anyone in the Wabash Valley can come to ask for and offer help during this time. We want EVERY PERSON to have their basic needs met during this time.

The Vigo County Mutual Aid group is entirely run by community residents and compassionate citizens that want to make sure that ALL PEOPLE in the Wabash Valley have access to getting their basic needs met.

We match community volunteers with residents of the community that are in need of help or assistance that are unable to help themselves.

Mutual Aid is…

• –Getting people together in your community to provide material support to each other
• –Building relationships with your neighbors based on trust and common interest
• –Making decisions by consensus rather than relying on authority or hierarchy
• –Sharing things rather than hoarding things
• –Treating no one as disposable
• –Providing all kinds of support, ranging from food prep to childcare to translation to emotional support, and recognizing the value of all of them
• –A political education opportunity, where we build the relationships and analysis to understand why we are in the conditions that we’re in
• –Preparation for the next disaster (natural or economic). Next time around we’ll already have relationships with each other and know who is vulnerable and needs support
• –A great jumping off point for other kinds of organizing and movement work

Mutual Aid is not…

• –Quid pro quo transactions
• –Only for disasters or crises
• –Charity or a way to “save” people
• –A reason for a social safety net not to exist