Greater Prospect Heights Mutual Aid's Community Fund

Greater Prospect Heights Mutual Aid (GPHMA) is a neighborhood network that provides material, emotional and informational support to residents of Prospect Heights and other nearby neighborhoods. Formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working to build up an organization that can endure beyond the current crisis.

In the past few months, we have been helping neighbors maintain communication through platforms like Whatsapp and Slack. Through our regular community calls, we’ve also been providing opportunities for neighbors to engage in meaningful discussion on issues such as police violence, housing justice and mental health.

Since April, the mainstay of our efforts to provide direct aid to neighbors has been our grocery support program, which helps financially constrained neighbors acquire food and other basic household items on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Beyond helping neighbors get food, GPHMA’s grocery  program aims to build enduring relationships between volunteer shoppers and grocery recipients.

At the same time, we have been funneling volunteers towards a number of critical initiatives (from food distribution to voter registration to supplies drives) led by groups outside GPHMA.

You can learn more about GPHMA by visiting our website
To plug into our efforts you can fill out our volunteer form and join our slack!

By donating to this community fund, you'll be helping us to sustain and expand our grocery support program and to extend new crucial lines of support to neighbors living in and around Prospect Heights Brooklyn.

Currently, GPHMA's grocery support program spends about $1,500 every week. This fundraiser will enable us to collect and disperse more money to more volunteer shoppers who purchase and deliver food and other essential goods to neighbors in need. We are raising money on a bimonthly basis. The money we raise between now and May 31st will determine the program's budget through June 30th!

You can track where and how we are spending our money here

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many of the links that bind us to one another. While we cannot escape our interdependence we can shape its governing terms. During a crisis, we can retreat into isolation, or we can fight for a society founded on cooperation and mutual aid rather than callousness. 

The inequalities that police access to food, housing, health care, safety and other basic necessities operate at national and global scales. However, these inequalities manifest locally, even within our small slice of Brooklyn. It is our belief that any effective response to these problems must engage and empower local communities. If we are going to effectively confront our uncertain future and the enduring, structural problems that plague New York (one of the world's richest but most unequal cities) we have to build solidarity with the people who reside and labor in our neighborhoods.