Author: Grace Maselli

By Grace Maselli

Timebanking founder Edgar Cahn, now an octogenarian, has wisdom to share. “Timebanking is an explicit way of harnessing self-interest and altruism,” he notes. Sure, people who join have specific interests and needs, but there’s beauty in timebanking’s alchemy informed by another medium of exchange. Beyond cash transactions, people involved in timebanks tend to assign value to what Edgar calls “physic income.” That which is earned on behalf of the human soul. The spirit. With all of it potentially nurtured by helping others as one’s own needs are also met. For the biggest payoff, empathy and caring are marbled into the equation.

Said another way, the exchange of task-and-time itself, the interplay of doing and giving, has intrinsic value. But currency also comes in the form of self-esteem, Edgar believes. For example, “Teachers take lower salaries because their self-esteem is based in part on the choice to make the world better. You get psychic income from feeling good about yourself.” (Of course, our devoted teachers in Tampa Bay deserve psychic income and dollars, this writer believes.) So here’s a hats-off to TBT and its raison d’être:  “nourishment” of the psyche and community in its multiple and invaluable forms.

By Grace Maselli

 

Combining compassion with creative thinking, Edgar Cahn linked currency with “social care networks” in 1995 when he founded TimeBanks USA, a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C. A law professor and speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, Cahn’s sense of community consciousness and collaboration has long been established. Respect and reciprocity underpin Cahn’s system of exchange: where an hour of work to assist a neighbor with a task—whether it’s donating time to help clean out a garage or cook and deliver a meal—is exchanged and the doer receives and a hour of timebank credit for each hour of work completed. Paying it forward, being available to community members in need. Such notions began with an idea from Cahn who formalized it into timebanking and who continues to care about building connections between people and advancing social justice causes, including his work on behalf of Native Americans and defending their civil rights. Keep your eyesopen. More to come on the history of timebanks and Cahn.