Community Care Kit Project

Mission

The Community Care Kit Project is a cluster of practice-based explorations that aim to expand our notions of what counts as care. One of its missions is recognizing the harm in thinking of individuals as solely responsible for their own care. When do practices of self-care become another demand that we condition ourselves for ever greater productivity, or another niche for consumer culture? In the tradition of abolitionist feminism, the project is simultaneously critical & creative, grounded in recognizing our interdependence and dreaming ways to put it into practice. Given that institutionalized routes of care fail many of us and create harm, how can we build care structures for ourselves?

We want to thank our previous graduate assistant Sylvie Rosenkalt and recognize the care she put into developing this project in its incubation; she in turn wanted to thank Mimi Khúc, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Rae Parnell for their wisdom, guidance and labor towards this project in all of its iterations.

Plain Language Mission Statement: 

The Community Care Kit Project wants to explore what care is. Some people think we are the only ones who are supposed to take care of ourselves, and if we have needs that aren’t met we are doing something wrong. We disagree. Sometimes we don’t have what we need and it’s not our fault.

We don’t want care to be used to get us ready to do more work, or to work harder or faster.  We also don’t want companies to make money off of our care needs. We don’t want care to turn into control of our bodies or lives.

When the government or big companies try to take care of us, they often fail. They can hurt people instead of helping. We would like to stop that from happening and learn new  and better ways to take care of each other.

People have been thinking about these ideas and organizing for a long time, calling this way of thinking “abolitionist feminism”. They are critical and bold about naming things that we need to get rid of, and also creative in thinking up new solutions. We want to build on their work.

We know everyone needs each other. We want to learn new ways to care for each other.

The Community Care Cohort is the cornerstone of the CCKP.

The Community Care Cohort (CCC) internship is an opportunity for undergraduate students to learn about care work, and experiment with co-creating and leading a care project within a supportive environment. Interns will engage deeply with the questions raised in the Community Care Kit Project mission statement.

Interns will learn about different histories and practices of care work, focusing on disability justice and healing justice. Interns will also build skills (facilitation, one-on-ones, consensus decision making, etc.), make intentional connections to build relationships, and map existing personal networks/pods of care. CCC interns will also engage with guest speakers from care work projects from the Chicago-area and beyond.

Check out our 1 page overview of the internship.

You can also view a text-only version of the internship handout or large print version of internship handout.

Check out the internship page for more information and to apply!!

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