(Edgar) The neighbor to neighbor TimeBanks will then set up a special project to address a school problem, or a school based time bank or an elders based time bank will start reaching out for inter-generational pieces or community based pieces.Sobrante Park in Oakland just merged the two together. They started off as an investment by the Alameda Public Health Department to deal with violence, particularly between blacks and Hispanics and in the weaving together of that...one of the things that came out of that was a clear bridging over those issues, but also of major anti-gang movement but also they hold the community health fair and do the work of the community health fair. So you can see that they move in multiple directions and are not mutually exclusive.
(Chris) That varies just about as much as the kinds of TimeBank. For some, it's need. For others, it's curiosity. For others, a genuine desire to help others and be more involved in the community. Organizations join when they learn they can connect more closely with the community by paying volunteers in Time Dollars and then earning those Time Dollars back by offering resources to the Time Bank members.
(Q) The baby boomers are now retiring and the bulk of America's population is turning gray. How can Time Banks help society cope with the increasing burden and needs of these older communities?
(Chris) TimeBanking got its first start through programs working with the elderly. More recently, the Administration on Aging has just funded the city of Montpelier, VT, to create a form of TimeBanking called a Care Bank that specifically aims to provide informal services to seniors to help them stay in their homes. Montpelier is piloting this model and if it works as hoped, we expect to see Care Banking being used all across the country. Like Time Banking, CareBanks use Time Dollars but they ask for a deeper level of commitment by requiring monthly "premiums" in either Time Dollars alone, or Time Dollars and a very small monthly fee. In return for these regular payments, the seniors can call on regular help from the CareBank, whose members include people of all ages.
(Q) Would you say that TimeBanks help to plug the holes that national currency leaves in our local economies?
(Edgar) Well it certainly plugs on set of holes around social transactions and building trust. Money by definition you got where the return is, the economics functions on a principle of optimizing each transaction so you leave your town you leave your family you leave your country if you can get a few more pennies on for the hour, so to speak. TimeBanking involves some kind commitment sinking roots and enduring relationships so that relationships are viewed as having a very special intrinsic value and to the extent that the economy doesn't honor or value that an in fact devalues that, yes it plugs a hole. It's different from saying can it deal with the problems we are seeing now with the economy.
(Chris) Money as we know it and the economy as we know it tends to reward specialization, Adam Smith and all of that....TimeBanking doesn't reward specialization of course it's an hour for an hour for an hour, there is no specialization rewarded at all so one of the dynamics that we really do find that is an interesting one is how it crosses divides that can be made artificially made through economic forces. In New York the visiting nurses association runs a time bank and they have described how it bridges both class, race, age and capabilities in a very interesting way. They are calling their Time Banks sort of little United Nations because the way they have brought so many diverse members together.
(Chris) In some communities, most certainly they do. They have the potential to do so much more broadly. The mainstream is really just beginning to learn this.
(Q) In an article for YES Magazine in the fall of 2002, you wrote:
"I wanted the currency to declare: It is time we draw a line in the sand. It is time we say: No more throwaway people. It is time we declare that we will not demand subordination, peonage, or passivity as the price for providing help to a human being in need."
It's been almost 8 year since that statement. Based on your experiences over these past 8 years, have Time Dollars fallen short or exceeded your projections?
(Edgar) We are both thrilled with what it has been able to prove in terms of its ability to enlist the unemployed, the disabled, teenagers, the elderly, help knit families together, help keep kids out of institutions who are bi-polar or schizophrenic. Mobilize people to address really intolerable disparities. When your committed to advancing social justice you are never satisfied, we would say that while the knowledge of what it does is beginning to expand it has barely begun to make the kind of in roads that we think it is capable of making. Time Banks USA has recently been funded by the Kellogg Foundation to use what we know as a part of a racial justice inactive that tries to do something very fundamental that is to create an obligation for officials to use knowledge, knowledge of what works. As we may headway on that inactive, knowledge what time banking can do will be a part of that obligation.
(Chris) We have the tool time dollar, and then we have the theoretical framework that Edgar laid out in "No more throw away people" the book, and it's a theoretical practical kind of framework the framework co-production and the 5 core principals that we promote with TBing are they sort of ...the framework beneath the tools has a force all of its own as well in so we are constantly in this double space of having a framework of thinking called co-production and having this tool called Time Dollar. This is another area that can feel a bit strange to the people who are used to having complementary currencies ...they see them as another form of money and there is isn't a kind of social framework underlying them like there is with Time Banking.
(Chris) The actual use of TimeBanking still falls way, way short of its potential. But that's just a part of the story. We see disempowered communities gaining a new understanding of their strengths and capacities by using Time Dollars. We see young people who had been written off turning around and gaining a new sense of self-worth through their contributions to others. We see the range of uses for TimeBanking in the social justice arena continuing to expand. So, I will not say they have either fall short or exceeded projections. Their potential is still unfolding. I might wish it would unfold faster but what's already been achieved is really remarkable.
(Q) Was Time Banking ever meant to be a replacement for actual cash or national currency?
(Chris) No. It's a complementary currency and was always intended to be.
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