Giving Compass' Take:
- Taylor Dudley spotlights the work of Funders for Mutual Aid in Sudan and discusses how mutual aid is a worldview which facilitates community self-determination in Sudan.
- What might funders learn from listening to mutual aid groups to co-create models of funding that center the leadership and dignity of communities in Sudan and across the globe?
- Search for a nonprofit focused on mutual aid.
- Access more nonprofit data, advanced filters, and comparison tools when you upgrade to Giving Compass Pro.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Funders for Mutual Aid in Sudan steadfastly supports local groups across Sudan, leaders who continue to sustain life, connection and community under some of the most complex and challenging conditions in the world. Last month, I had the opportunity to meet with some of these leaders in Nairobi and listen and learn with them. The conversations were grounding and humbling, and they reinforced the importance of continued solidarity.
A truth became clear to me through these conversations: Solidarity isn’t just about how much we give, but how we give it.
Mutual Aid as Community Self-Determination and Deep Listening as a Practice
One of the most important lessons from the trip was the value of deep listening. Not the kind that happens in formal consultations or pre-scheduled calls, but the listening that happens in long conversations over tea and coffee, in pauses, in the moments where partners feel safe enough to share what keeps them going and what keeps them up at night. This form of deep listening is a crucial component of mutual aid work.
“Deep listening, for us, is an ongoing practice of trust – where local perspectives are not only heard, but thoughtfully reflected in decisions and actions,” shared a volunteer from the emergency response rooms (ERRs).
Mutual aid groups in Sudan (ERRs, neighborhood committees, women-led teams and youth organizers) have survived through listening to community voices. They listen first, and their actions flow from that understanding. Their work is grounded in relationships, not log frames. This type of listening is not simply a value; it’s a methodology.
For donors, adopting deep listening means:
- Slowing down to understand lived realities.
- Allowing partners to define priorities and timelines.
- Interpreting “need” not through a funder lens, but through a community one.
It means internalizing that our proximity to the crisis is intellectual, and our partners’ proximity is lived. We must listen accordingly.
Read the full article about Funders for Mutual Aid in Sudan by Taylor Dudley at Center for Disaster Philanthropy.