BUILDING
SYSTEMS
OF SUPPORT

This is a live website, journey, experiment and exploration in building and creating systems around support. These systems are being designed to support people who are struggling from a variety of traumas.

Asking for support can be scary and vulnerable: vulnerability builds connection.

Capitalist patriarchal colonialist culture IS NOT supportive of human life. So if we want to survive we must work out how build unshakeable systems for ourselves and each other.

There is often enough willingness, but not enough knowledge or organisation.

• People are often so willing to support each other
  
• We often don’t know what supports us (as we might be so used to being unsupported) so we need to work this out and learn
• People often don’t know how to support others and what works best for each person
• People who are in need of support don’t have energy/capacity to organise support
• Lots of people don’t know how to organise support

What is a system?
A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole,

What is support?
To help someone emotionally or in a practical way. To hold up or serve as a foundation for.

What is a support system?
A network of people, [practices and processes] who provide an individual with practical or emotional support

The totality of this website points to a system, the different parts on this website, for example the first steps and the spectrum of support are elements of the whole system.

"When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can 'go it alone'. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the Lichens" - Robin Wall Kimmerer