How to Share Time

from YES! Magazine:



How to Share Time
When dollars are scarce, timebanks help neighbors swap skills, instead.

by Mira Luna
posted Jul 08, 2010


During the last two great depressions in the U.S., hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people organized to meet their basic needs when the mainstream economy and centralized monetary system failed them. Unemployed poor folks got together to create time dollar stores and cooperative mills, farms, health care systems, foundries, repair and recycling facilities, distribution warehouses, and a myriad of other service exchanges.

Many of these were based on the hour as a unit of account, and often everyone’s hour was equal and could either be exchanged for another hour of service or its equivalent in goods.

Modern forms of time exchange, called Timebanks and LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems), have been around since the 1980s. Now, with one in ten Americans unemployed (likely twice that, given recording problems), time exchanges are making a comeback.

Timebanks USA, a system of over 120 timebanks in the U.S. and a few other countries, was developed by activist lawyer Edgar Cahn as a way to help the underprivileged and underserved help each other through an organized system of reciprocity. In the following interview, Cahn explains the basic principles behind timebanks:

Watch: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/how-to-share-time


Official Timebanks purchase software that provides a ready-made, standardized directory and accounting system of individuals, and sometimes nonprofits or government agencies, that are willing to provide services to their communities and receive help in return. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/how-to-share-time

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