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While the economy is offering so many challenges right now, it is also offering us opportunities to look at ways of doing things differently. In the past, we have relied heavily on the exchange of money to pay for the services we need. The concept of a Timebank offers us an alternative to this way of doing things. So what is a Timebank and how do they work, you ask? Timebanking is a member-operated community service movement with more than 700 chapters throughout the US and in 22 other countries. It empowers people to improve and enrich each other’s lives through reciprocity.
- It is based on the idea that work is at least as viable and dependable as money, and at the same time a fairer and more versatile means of exchange.
- A member offers an hour or more of his/her skills - whatever they happen to be - to another, in exchange for hours of credit the other member has earned by helping someone else.
- Every hour of one member’s work is worth one hour of any other member’s work; and all are accounted for in the local organization’s records (the “bank”).
- Everyone can do something - possibly many things - that someone else can’t do. Therefore everyone has intrinsic and equal value in the timebanking system.
Timebanking isn’t simply the back-and-forth trade of barter. Every member posts “Offers” of services they are able and willing to trade and “Requests” for other services they need but may not have the skill, time, strength or energy to do themselves. Every hour of service they give to a member earns them one “Time Dollar” they can spend on an hour of service by any other member. As a timebank grows, its members’ Offers and Requests tend to match up.
TimeBanks USA, the national organization, helps local communities to get started and provides a website and access to the national database, guidance in developing membership and setting up a trading system, networking with other timebanks and a code of ethics.
Kim Hodge, a resident of Lathrup Village, Michigan, read about timebanking in 2007 and was impressed by the logic of the idea. She immediately saw how well suited it would be to an already close-knit and sociable community like Lathrup Village. Kim, who for years had wanted to get to know more of her neighbors, began to knock on their doors, spreading the word and recruiting support. “Here was a way to connect unmet needs with untapped resources,” she says of their response. “Things would be done and value exchangeswith no regard for how much or how little money people have. And, since, there is no money exchanged, it’s also tax-free.”
Since the group started in January 2008, the 60 members have exchanged over 670 hours of service with each other. The Lathrup Village chapter’s current list of exchanges include transportation, pet and babysitting, housekeeping, shopping, cooking, painting, bicycle and household repairs, gardening, sewing, massage, tutoring, coaching, swimming and violin lessons, computer help, photography, decorating, flower arranging, Facebook and eBay lessons, jewelry repair, beer brewing, networking, business editing and even makeup tips among otherlimitless possibilities.
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If the hours are in the bank, they are good for any legitimate work a member needs or will do. For example, Kim needed advice on how to keep her houseplants healthy and flourishing. Member Richard Reeves, a Master Gardener, explained and demonstrated these techniques in Kim’s home for an hour. Richard then spent the hour earned helping Kim and others he’d banked earlier, doing graphic design work to get help on his website.
“The beauty of it is that an hour is an hour,” Richard says. “Anything you can do has value if someone needs it. An hour of legal advice is worth an hour of weeding the garden. People who honor each other’s work in this way make a stronger community.” This is a great way for Michiganians to make a difference and find a way to plug into our communities and be stronger, better people because of it.
Timebanking is not limited to community service but can be done in a variety of different ways and deal with a variety of social challenges. The New Economics Forum recently completed a study called “The New Wealth of Time: How timebanking helps people build better public services.” It describes how timebanking is already helping to create better services across a range of areas, including mental and physical health, services for young people and older people, regeneration, housing and criminal justice.
In Maine, the decade-old Portland Time Bank has over 750 members, mostly lower-income, who have engaged in more than 25,000 transactions including medical care at a health center that accepts time dollars.
Washington D.C.’s Time Dollar Youth Court allows first-time offenders charged with minor infractions to sit on youth juries to earn time dollars to buy refurbished computers. Members of a Texas timebank planted a community garden.
For info on how to start a TimeBank in your community or organization, go to TimeBanks USA, www.timebanks.org. or contact Kim Hodge at 248.424.7455,
hodgekim@sbcglobal.net.
Based on and adapted from the article Lathrup Village residents build a Timebank by Michael Madigan and Kim Hodge in LathrupVillage Crier, Spring 2008. |
