By Grace Maselli
Earlier this year in June, Smithsonian.com put a spotlight on timebanking in its article, “‘Time Banking’ Is Catching On In the Digital World; Apps that allow users to pay for services in redeemable credits instead of cash are helping to build communities“. Now that’s some off-the-chain positive exposure in our world of flipside currency; a world where we jettison cash in exchange for service hours of multiple kinds for our community members, from washing someone’s hair to ironing their doilies .
In addition to the classic “Hourworld” listed in the article (and the not-mentioned “Timebanks USA“), the Smithsonian piece dives into a newer digital environment for tracking exchange hours known as “Ying”. Part of Ying’s self-identify proclamation is, “We believe in the rising stock of human equity. We implore the laws of abundance and stoke the fire of continuous reciprocity…At YING, your self worth will always come before your net worth.” Wow! Edgar Cahn’s *got* to be proud…
The article also offers a caveat about how to elicit longevity within the timebanking paradigm. According to Ed Collom, co-author of Equal Time, Equal Value: Community Currencies and Time Banking in the US, “the most successful time banks have official hosts and infrastructure; grassroots movements with no leadership tend to peter out.” Another reason why our TBT Revitalization Project is so meaningful as we pump it up leading into 2019!