[17] Woodbine: Volunteer-run Community Resource Hub

Cooperative Journal

Woodbine is a DIY volunteer-run community resource hub located in Ridgewood Queens, NY. It’s all encompassing of solidarity, intended to cultivate the practices, skills, and tools needed to build autonomy. They host workshops, lectures, discussions and serve as a meeting and organizing space. They offer a multitude of ways to get community members' needs met like through their seed library, trades and services directory, english classes and much more!

In this episode I speak with one of the co-founders Matt Peterson and volunteer Amoga Sahu about the creation and sustainability of this mutual aid hub. We speak about how they gathered the funds to get started and how they managed to not only sustain themselves but move into a bigger space during the pandemic. They’ve been around since 2014 and most DIY spaces don’t last in NYC so this is pretty major. You’ll learn about some of the free events, tools, and resources available to the community like their recently installed Mesh internet network. Matt shares an interesting perspective on decision making structures and accountability within a volunteer-run space which tends to be the one of most difficult aspects of running a collectively run space. At the end there’s some tips offered on how others can build an autonomous community centered space in the city.