Residents already share 12 hand tools, skills, and repair time. A hallway shelf is crowded, poorly labelled, and too high for several users.
AC9.5 · learner packet
Mutual aid,
not charity.
Cedar Junction case file and five records for responding to a request without taking control.
Relationship before recognition.
Use the fictional case unless a facilitator confirms an invited, safeguarded partner route. No one must prove need, disclose personal circumstances, express gratitude, appear in publicity, or accept a project designed without them.
- Learner
- Group code or independent route
- Start date
Final portfolio
Cedar Junction
A 28-home cooperative apartment building has asked a neighbourhood youth workshop to help prototype an accessible mobile station for its resident-run repair circle.
Prototype storage, labels, a tool-return check, and a maintenance guide. Residents—not the youth workshop—set use rules and decide whether the trial continues.
No wall mounting. The cart must fit a 90 cm passage, stay below 120 cm, use existing tools, and remain reversible.
“A person should be able to identify and return a tool without reaching above shoulder height, reading small print, or asking someone to reveal why they need help.”
“A beautiful station is not useful if the same two people keep sorting, cleaning, and replacing everything. Show the weekly work before we agree.”
“No names, apartment numbers, eligibility test, or borrowing history. The circle wants a missing-tool count, not a record of who used what.”
“A previous donor posted hallway photos before residents approved them. This time there are no resident images, stories, quotes, or building details in publicity.”
Conditional resource offer
A fictional maker collective offers the full $240 if its logo appears on the cart and it receives a group photo. Cedar Junction has authorized neither condition. An unconditional $140 school materials fund is available, and reused materials may cover the rest.
Residents approve testing but not public display or external evaluation.
The first cycle takes twice the planned sorting and cleaning time.
Two labels are unreadable at low height and one bin blocks the passage.
The return check is ignored, but the labelled storage is consistently used.
Fixed boundaries
- This case is fictional and creates no real service, safety promise, or emergency resource.
- No names, apartment numbers, diagnoses, images, personal stories, borrowing histories, or eligibility records are collected.
- Residents may reject, narrow, change, pause, or close the prototype and keep control of the existing tools.
- The class must account for unused resources, temporary records, maintenance work, repair, and an ending.
Need and relationship brief
Begin with the request and existing capacity. Keep direct evidence, inference, uncertainty, and non-goals visibly separate.
Person / groupDefines needDecidesDoes workBears riskInfluence / refusal route
Power and co-design audit
Offer real alternatives, including doing less or stopping. Record what affected people changed rather than treating feedback as decoration.
Smallest response
Shared-work response
No-project alternative
Who controls each part?
PowerBefore reviewAfter reviewMechanism / evidence
Defines need
Owns resources
Sets timing
Defines success
Represents publicly
Continues or ends
Work, resource, and maintenance log
Record coordination, access, care, cleaning, and follow-through alongside visible making. Assigned work can still be refused.
TaskConsented ownerPlan / actualSupport / backupResource / costResult / deviation
Resource account
Impact, handoff, or closure record
Use the least evidence that supports a decision. A large output, grateful quote, or continued project is not automatically success.
MeasureBaselineObserved resultLimit / missing evidence
Useful outcome
Access / agency
Work / burden
Harm / complaint
Maintenance