Editor’s Note: In February 2025, Shareable launched Mutual Aid 101, a free learning series to introduce new organizers to mutual aid. Over 3,000 people from across the US participated in the series over six weeks. During an Offers & Needs Marketfor participants, a Shareable staff member shared a need for participants to tell their story. In this article, Lannie Duong shares her experience and the impact of Mutual Aid 101.
Mutual Aid 101 was only made possible by small donations from readers and participants like you. You can help us continue fueling organizers like Lannie who are turning local care into lasting resilience by making a gift today.
I am a daughter of refugees, a Southeast Asian woman, and a mom raising two girls in an increasingly hostile world. When overwhelmed, I tend to look for action—some physical thing I can do to take back some semblance of balance or calm.
In 2017, when Donald Trump took office as president, I felt unmoored and searched for a safe space. I came across a local activism group online called the Resistance (which later became an Indivisible chapter). The room was filled with about 200 strangers, yet the energy was singular and electric. I had arrived feeling lost, and left feeling uplifted with purpose. At the end of the meeting, I approached the speaker with questions about potential community outreach events, something that’s been an active part of my life from high school through post graduate school and beyond. She immediately and graciously pulled me into the fold and suddenly I became the Community Outreach lead.
Book donations in 2017. Photo credit: Lannie Duong
I partnered with existing organizations and organized monthly outreach events, including:
Collecting items for refugee welcome kits for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Sacramento resettled more refugees than any other US city that year; today, Sacramento still has the largest Afghan population in the US.
Preparing and serving breakfast to the unhoused, many of whom were veterans, through Loaves and Fishes.
Organizing a Day of Dinners event through Indivisible, bringing like-minded community members together with guided topic conversations, and humanizing each other with a shared meal.
Collecting gently used children’s books and stuffed animals for refugee children at a welcome picnic with World Relief Sacramento.
Over the course of that year, I also branched out into other forms of activism—getting more politically involved with postcard writing, attending marches with my young family, and even text banking for the first time. I remember thinking how opportunities suddenly seemed to present themselves everywhere. What’s more likely is they were