Connecting Untapped Resources with Unmet Needs
By Grace Maselli
Whether it’s home repairs, acupuncture, or sailing. Childcare, origami,
event planning, or graphic design, as the video on timebanking produced by the University of Michigan’s Environmental Psychology Lab describes, 
the possibilities are endless. Our TBT like the
hundreds around the globe is a service exchange system where the “person hour” takes the place of money and people earn and offer time credits to help build community, connection, and just get stuff done! 
By Grace Maselli
I went to a friend’s house recently to wash her hair. She’d just had shoulder surgery and needed help with something I take for granted—the ability to easily execute self-care. Bandaged and still in the early phase of recovery, “Pamela” cared about hygiene. Truth be told, it was a hairy situation for me at first. I hadn’t washed another person’s head of hair since my children were small enough to fit inside a kitchen sink. (On my worry list: unintended re-injury of Pam’s shoulder, soap in her eyes…) Happily, it went well and my friend smelled fresh as a daisy on a sunshine-y morning. I even played full-on hairdresser and combed her hair, added product, including a spray to spike her hair–do just the way she likes. Heretofore, Pamela didn’t know from timebanking…so I pitched away. “But what can I offer?” she asked in earnest. “Just about anything you might need or like to have a helping hand with yourself: car rides, organization, sorting storage boxes, gardening, reading to a house-bound person who could use some human contact.”
My plan as of this writing is to pick Pam up and drive her to the TBT August monthly meeting to get more than her head wet, but her feet too. Then I took to Page 34 of a long-ago written but still relevant missive published by “TimeBanks USA” in their, “Guidebook 1: Exploring the Big Ideas of TimeBanking, Transforming Time, Reweaving Community”. Page 34 offers the following suggestions for ways to contribute and receive timebanking tasks that map to many of our own TBT offerings:
| Accompaniment Adult literacy Advocacy Befriending Car care Child care Clerical support Computer assistance Computer literacy Consumer support Cooking Craft lessonsErrands Entertainment Financial advice Group Activities Gardening |
Haircuts Heavy lifting Home Repair House watching Information sharing Jewelry makingLegal assistance Light housekeepingMassage Meal preparation Medical monitoring Music lessons Personal grooming Pet CareReading Resource sharingSewing/Mending ShoppingTutoring Translation services |
I reckon I engaged in two activities with Pam that appear on this wonderful list: “Personal grooming” and “Befriending.” You’ll notice too that “haircuts” is colorized and bolded. It’ll be a long time before I ever take scissors to head again, now that my children are teens and the days of unprofessional trims with craft scissors are behind us. But I think I may add hair washing to a potentially ever-expanding list of TBT skills I could offer right here on the peninsula in Tampa Bay.
By Grace Maselli
It’s about connection. In person. “Facetime” as it was originally intended! (Remember, Oprah won’t be there to help hoist that tree out of your driveway after a Florida-style storm. Sheldon and his geeky Big Bang T
heory friends won’t give you a ride to the airport or scrub the barnacles off your boat in a timebank swap.) But you stand a REAL chance with REAL people in Tampa Bay. And even more so if they know who you are! So come to our TBT social the first Monday of every month. Host a potluck. Or a game night and earn TBT hours! Dust off the Scrabble boards and open up your living room for a retro experience in real time; throw in some mixed nuts and lemonade to make it super groovy. We’d love to see more of our 590 members in all three dimensions (or all 10 if you’re a Superstring theorist)! Check the TBT calendar for times and locations.
By Grace Maselli
That’s right, at TBT we’re 590 MEMBERS STRONG with a tally of 23,398 hours exchanged as of this moment in time! We’re making valuable deposits into the local community with no bank tellers, no dollar transactions, no drive-throughs! Rather, we pay dividends to our peeps using skills swapping and connection to our local residents in an alternative system of shared interest and assistance. We’re contributing rides, fixing toilets, grooming dogs, and gardening for each other. Tell your friends. Expand the network of neighborliness!
By Grace Maselli
Time as Money is a 70-minute documentary directed by Lenore
Eklund and released in 2015 featuring, of course, Edgar Cahn. In it, the beauty of skills swapping, “alternative” currency, creating a 
network of support and a “secret economy” that builds real life, real world, REAL (not virtual!) connections between humans figures largely. Ironically, it looks like a direct download will run you $2.99+. Or, for a free copy, you can always set your sights on that venerable, enduring community system: the public library. “Everyone has something of value to offer,” says Cahn in Time as Money. Who wants to host a movie night at their place? Invite TBT timebankers and earn hours. Let us know at info@tampabaytime.org
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.
By Grace Maselli
TBT recently interviewed member Virginia Rieck Warren. We pulled the proverbial camera way back during the exchange and took a look at TBT through Virginia’s eyes as a public health professional. “Published research indicates time banks have the capacity to increase social capital: 
and those community connections make towns and cities more resilient,” Virginia offered.
Little Things Can Matter
Even small gestures—connecting through TBT to help in someone’s garden, or tutor a young person learning to read. Outside the time bank, ask office co-workers about their families and vacations, let a neighbor know you’re available to help with an errand, open the traffic flow to another driver, compliment a friend in a meaningful way. These small acts of connection and caring help strengthen social ties. They’re small gestures of engagement that let people know you’re thinking about them and they can make a huge, positive difference in a person’s life. Dr. Joe Kelly’s “Project Change” is a case in point. Based in Vancouver, Joe is self described as an “innovator in sustainability and social change.” You too can make your town and city more resilient by signaling interest in the people around you.
Greetings Tampa Bay Time website visitors! Find more of our latest news and events on Facebook. This is a link to the Tampa Bay Time Bank Facebook page.
Greetings Tampa Bay Time website visitors! Find more of our latest news and events on Facebook. This is a link to the Tampa Bay Time Bank Facebook page.