About Us
We are a group of college students dedicated to redistributing wealth and meeting community need in Brunswick, ME. We are not formally affiliated with Bowdoin College.
Polar Bear Mutual Aid (PBMA) is a communal effort for addressing needs within our community. We are not a charity. We are building a network through which we can share resources effectively and justly.
We operate from the understanding that some people within our community have ample access to resources while others have basic material needs that go unmet. We facilitate the redistribution of resources and invite you to participate in this process by requesting aid, making a donation, or sharing PBMA with your friends.
We believe this is an act of community care!
Our Values
- No one in our community (*or anywhere*) should have to struggle to pay rent, or with medical debt, or worry about having food or adequate clothing for winter. The current institutional structures within our society are insufficient to ensure that people have their needs met.
- We want to invest in our beautiful community. We value trusting one another and not regarding monetary requests with suspicion.
- We believe that people with material need should have the power to determine how to spend their own money.
- We reject paternalism and we are not saviors. We are building structures so that we can better care for each other within this community.
- Redistributing wealth must be a consistent practice in response to a society that maintains wealth inequality. We are committed to resisting systems that make some people rich and other people poor.
- We value honest conversations about wealth inequality in our society. We encourage upper-class people to reflect on their economic privilege and take action in sharing their resources.
- We value different forms of giving and acknowledge the wide spectrum of need within our community. We hope to expand our capacity to accommodate more forms of giving and receiving.
Learn More
Humans have always engaged in practices of mutual aid and community care. More recently, many groups of college students (Colby, Bates, Scripps) have launched mutual aid networks to better support each other. Here are some resources if you want to learn more about mutual aid!
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity Through This Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade |
Mutual Aid 101 |
NYT: How College Students Are Helping Each Other Survive |
NYT: How Neighborhood Groups Are Stepping In Where the Government Didn’t