Interview with TimeBanking Founder Professor Edgar Cahn and Chris Gray the CEO of TimeBanks USA, April 2010

(Edgar) Community currencies in your context has tended to mean community of price. We include as our definition of community, community of vision. So that when a youth corp. for instance seeks to create, a peer culture that values contribution and mutual respect and that rejects violence. That is a community even if the kids are widely disbursed. It's equally a community we saw with the health maintenance organization in Brooklyn where people may have been scattered so it's not a neighborhood definition of community it's really a shared value definition of community. I think the Internet has made that sense of community one that people will link to much more readily.

(Chris) Edgar actually created the Time Bank Youth Court here in D.C.

(Edgar) Yes, they are. Within the Time Banking movement in the US, we usually now refer to the currency itself as TimeBanking. The hour for an hour aspect of TimeBanking makes them a truly complementary currency, one that is specifically designed to stimulate an economy which is also complementary - ie, the economy of home, family, neighborhood and community. This is an "economy" in its own right because it is the site of production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services - but on a whole different basis than the formal economy which is powered by money.

(Q) Approximately how many new Time Banks are in operation here in the U.S.?

(Chris) There are TimeBanks within the TimeBanks' network and then there are TimeBanks for whatever reason don't choose to be formally a part of the network, they don't choose to be affiliate I believe there are about 140 TimeBanks within the network and outside of the network, we obviously can't have a certain knowledge but we think up to 20 more.

(Q) Is the following sentence a true statement? TimeBanks differ from barter systems and LETS because there is no commercial exchange or pricing medium. An hour of your time, is simply an hour of time. The rate for that hour does not change from city to city. Can you please explain this a bit further?

(Edgar) TimeBanks as a community currency was designed to take express exception to the definition of value that market price sets. Price in the market is set by supply and demand, so as a thing is more scarce it's more valuable relative to demand and if it's abundant it's cheap and I realized that what that meant was that every fundamental capacity that defines us as human beings and enabled our species to survive and evolve was worthless in that pricing system. If we were going to start to value the kinds of things that human being need to do for each other, to build community, to raise children, to make democracy work, to fight for social justice we were going to have to find a way of honoring with value the work that was essential to promoting fundamental values.

In the context within which we work it [TimeBanking] sends a message of respect & equality that is a fundamental statement that will particularly will reveal across lines of race, and class or age or people who have been devalued. You can talk the rhetoric of saying I value but what Time Banking does is it says "oh you're real about that aren't you". That is a very important message when dealing with teenagers, when dealing with the elderly, when dealing with people who have been disabled. It really honors who they are and the essence of who they are.

(Q) A lot of people reading this are going to write me and ask how to get started. What does it take to get up and going with a local time bank and how many people are needed in house to run the operation?

(Chris) The community building energy that Edgar talked about, basically all that you need really is a skilled community organizer and the community organizer will know what to do and how to enlist a small team of people to start putting together that things that are needed, the infrastructure that is needed and get hooked on to some type of software. TimeBanks USA licensed out community leader software and it can be done pretty quickly. A small time bank can get up and running in pretty short order. After the ambition for much more that than or the skill levels are not there or there is a very distinct purpose for the TimeBank and there is a systems change. In those cases it becomes a very very much more significant task because there is a process of transitioning what you want to achieve, enlisting champions to help you create that, confront people who are opposed to it. I mean it can become a major major activity.

(Chris) For instance....one that took much longer, the Alameda County Public Health Department absolutely decided that they were going to create a TimeBank. They actually used some of the money they had to put a community organizer in place to build capacity and she worked a whole year before they judged that the community was actually ready with the skills they needed to run that time bank. Then they got Federal Funding started up, so it took about 15 months and two major training secessions in the community and then, even when that had happened, it took here about a year before they got the hang of it. In contrast, another TimeBank, Echo Park in LA(3), an individual learned about TimeBanking and within a few weeks they were making something happen. Echo Park TimeBank has such great energy. Edgar went out there actually after they had been running for about a year he happened to be going out on the west coast and they said would you come and visit and we'll set up meetings and it was all very joyous and kind of celebratory. It has been very interesting to watch them because they started out as a few friends and then as they have gone on in time the possible implications of TimeBanking have sort of become more apparent and they have been challenged about whether they want to change from what they started out from to be.

TimeBanks vary tremendously in scope, size and purpose. They can involve just family and friends, or a whole city. This huge range means that the journey to start-up can vary a great deal as well. It can take a few months or several years - and whether it is one or the other depends on many different factors. To help people navigate that journey, TimeBanks USA is midway through creating a whole new line of very inexpensive start-up guides and new types of coaching/training. Guidebooks 1 and 2 are complete. Guidebook 3 should be ready in mid-May. The first guide is simply for exploring possibilities, and provides activities for a small group to "try it out." The second guidebook provides a step-by-step visioning process and is followed by a third that carries forward the planning and implementation all the way up to opening the doors. The fourth will cover the ins and outs of running a TimeBank day-to-day.

(Q) What motivates people to join?

(Edgar) I've observed two kinds of energy that flow into TimeBanks. They shape the nature of the TimeBanks one I'll call a desire for connectiveness. A desire, and that powers both the neighbor to neighbor model but it also often links the neighbor to neighbor model to ecological concerns and the whole issue of sustainability. It's really, a matter of reducing social isolation and which is felt by many on the other hand it a sense of something vibrant happens when people come together in community. So that's one kind of energy, a desire to reduce isolation or a desire to increase connectiveness for all the values of the joy and the support that brings. The other kind of energy that brings people into TimeBanking, I'll call it is a sense of injustice and mobilization that something is intolerable. Whether it's kids being pushed out of school or kids in the juvenile system or elders being abandoned and that takes on open energy that is more focused and more purposeful that defines the scope in terms of system change more than around community building. Community building flows from that as the networks develop. Those are the two kinds of dominant energy that I see that result in enlisting people.

(Chris) It used to be TimeBanks tended to be one or the other, however, more and more TimeBanks are sort of weaving those two together, which has been quite interesting.

(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.

(Edgar) No. I think it clearly was not. We assume that there is a value in specialization that we don't deny. That human being are wired in two ways, we are wired for aggression and competition and that has its own survival value and we are wired for cooperation, collaboration and altruism. We think that Time Banking clearly draws first and primarily on that desire to work together to collaborate, to help to build a long term vision but that we know that money invites enormous achievement and competitive drive and we don't want to pretend that's...its about a hunger for power and also sometimes a predatory desire to take advantage of people. I just think that, that part of human nature is not going to go away, but I don't think that altruism, caring and collaboration is going to go away either. What is remarkable it how much that it has survived without a currency to acknowledge it and reinforce it.

(Chris) That is why too that we adopt spending quite a bit of time in every TimeBank out there on the sustainability because it's like there is a continuum. There is money, time banking in the middle and volunteering. The TimeBanks pull on volunteering energy and they pull on money energy and resources. In our answers to you we have been very concerned with how do we get money into a TimeBank. It cannot replace [money] it really is complementary. It needs, as Edgar always says, a thin stream of money as well as other types of energy to make it go.

(Q) From your writing on Co-Production you state, "TimeBanking takes the basic ideas of Co-Production? and builds on the fact that people naturally want to give back, to make a difference, just as professional providers do." Can TimeBanking and other community currency bridge the gap between the Core economy and the money economy?

(Edgar) I think we will see it first or we are seeing it first in the human service fields. Where you have a major breakdown in the core economy and the government rushes in and foundation rush in with money to pay professionals. The model used to be let's pay professionals to fix the community, fix the people and fix the neighborhood. What TimeBanking does is it taps a little bit of the money and gives it a huge multiplier effect by enlisting the very people who are defined as the problem as the co-workers and co-producers of the outcome that government and foundations seek to achieve. The question then becomes to what extent in doing so do those folks have access to the goodies of the market and government that they were previously unable to access. There we have begun to build bridges but for instance in long term care insurance, in juvenile justice the kids are learning recycled computers, in cross age peer tutoring they are earning recycled computers, some of them are earning vouchers that they can use at Safeway the end of the month when food stamps run out. The question of how one honors work building community, mentoring kids, raising families and striving for social justice. How one turns that into access to what money and only money can buy right now is one of the challenges that I think every community currency faces and that TimeBanking itself faces because it so clearly poses a different theory and definition of value. Tending to preserve this value we have had to be very careful with how those bridges are made. What is beginning to emerge in different places, is ways in which ...as in membership in the triple A gets you a discount at certain places, membership in Time Bank organizations can secure discounts from the market or can secure scholarships if community service is viewed, like when the Veterans come back and they had the GI Bill they got different mortgage rates, so it is possible to build those bridges and that is part of the frontier which we are exploring now.

(Chris) We totally understand that community currencies like LETS and other currencies have a very strong community building ethos behind them as well, many of them do. I think where TimeBanking is sort of a little different from them is that this has been so explicitly articulated though this idea of the core economy and through the notion that this core economy stands as something in and of its own right with its own exchanges and with its own dynamic. So since you actually put this out there about the core economy and it was interesting that you actually asked about the core economy you actually bring to the floor something that tends to get folded in to community currency more generally and makes it stand along and then you have to start looking at the question that you just asked, how do we bridge, where do we make the bridges, where are the bridges and all of a sudden they become explicit.

(Edgar) If you view the core economy in some sense as our eco system, it's like we didn't care about air or water or the ozone layer until we messed it up and then we realized without it we were in deep trouble. The same thing is true in terms of taking family, neighborhood, community, trust, social networks, friendships, mutual respect, moral infrastructure and social infrastructure. That is our eco system. Money floods in only when you screw it up so much it endangers others and that our own sustainability as a section of the species feels threatened and then all of a sudden it becomes fashionable to look at it as having economic significance. Just as we are seeing that building green has economic value and that there is money now in air purification and in reducing carbon emissions we are beginning to look at what are the carbon emissions of the way in which we treat kids, families and the way in which we treat community.

(Chris) If the intention is there to do that bridging; if there has been an effort to understand what that bridging requires; and if it is championed by individuals and organizations who are strong players in the money economy, then yes, it really can provide bridges across that gap.

(Q) For a new user, should they expect to buy groceries or fill up their gas tank paying with Time Dollars?

(Chris) That's not their intent. Time Dollars do not replace money in the way that that implies. Maybe if the new user is homeless, living in a shelter, and earns Time Dollars by contributing to the shelter, then one option offered by the shelter could be to cash in Time Dollars for a bag of groceries. That has happened with TimeBanking. But using Time Dollars to do regular grocery shopping or purchasing the gas? That would miss the whole point of what Time Dollars are for.

(Q) Can members earn time credits, collect them or pool them and donate them to a community group or project? (I love this idea)

(Chris) It's fine to donate Time Dollars. Actually, it is quite common to do so. The most powerful instances are where people who have always been at the receiving end of services are able to donate Time Dollars they have earned` to help others. But there is a caveat. The HARD part about Time Banking is actually asking for help. We all like to think that we are self-sufficient. If some TimeBank members always give away their Time Dollars and aren't willing to ask for help, they are only contributing half way to the circles of giving and receiving that TimeBanks seek to create. Even with the best of intentions, donating Time Dollars instead of using them may reinforce relationships of inequality between "haves" and "have-nots." In TimeBanking, the act of receiving is as important as the act of giving because it empowers someone else to give.

(Q) You have written, "TimeBanking had its roots in a time when "money for social programs dried up" and no dominant approach to social service in the U.S. was coming up with creative ways to solve the problem." In the current economy of 2010, not only are social service funds drying up, everyday essential programs and services are flat out dying. With all of these financial issue across America, do you feel that time banking will take on a much larger role in the coming years?

(Chris) Yes, I do. In part, that's because so much is being learned about what can be achieved using Time Banking.

(Edgar) I personally do. To pioneer a new initiative in Washington, DC for all the at risk kids who have been in one way or another hit a trip wire and been involved in the juvenile justice system. We doing the same, when they come out with folks who are returning from prison, because we are building and creating something called the Homecomers' Academy (1). They need to ask, "how do we survive?" if the answer is 'the way you survive is to continue to have problems, that's one thing. We think that the way to survive and the path that we are creating for survival is to contribute. We are using that model to deal with long term care insurance in Vermont. The federal government just made a three year million dollar grant to test the notion that seniors could age in place by contributing to each others well being and by their families being a part of an extended family social support network that would reduce the need for nursing home care and enable the people to support each other.

(Chris) I have a slightly different take on this, I think there is a very good chance that it will. For instance in Michigan, they have very few time banks, I think about 6 so far but the interest is huge. We are talking about a possibility of holding a really large training for probably well over 100 people there is an explosion of interest in using time banking as a way to mitigate the economic downturn. That is an opportunity that also comes to my mind with something of a challenge which is that for many people they just immediately leap to seeing time banking as a replacement for money and then be troubled as to why it is not operating as money does. All of that, and so that is pretty ...well might turn out to be really challenging. I'm just sort of watching the situation and saying how can we be really really clear that time banking does specific things and it just does not replace money.

(Edgar) Head start in St. Louis for example was using Tim Banking as a way to get parental involvement and we see increasingly that Time Banking will enable a community based organization that is running a time bank be a competitive bidder because of what they bring in terms of capacity and getting sustained community engagement.

(Edgar) The St. Louis program set up a Time Dollar...it was called a resident college and people could pay in time dollars tuition for courses and any resident who had a skill whether it was plumbing or photography or gardening or cooking or crocheting could offer to give a course and time banking set up its own board of regents to accept the proposal for a course and then it offered the course and people paid for the course in Time Dollars.(2) In Scotland, in the prisons they are using Tim Banking and people can use the time credits to get courses from the open university and are doing so. Here in the states we have offered as incentives for kids who want to earn karate and in Long Island mothers who want to learn word processing have earned computers and taken courses with Time Dollars that they have earned.

(Chris) So Edgar's giving you all of this, essentially this is one of the areas that I've heard Edgar pushing and suggesting and cajoling for years and years because it seems such a natural. Large organizations like colleges are conservative, they know what they know. It's been sort of an uphill battle to persuade them this is a good idea but I think this is one of the areas that we both feel this will be a growth area for time banking. The University of the District of Columbia is creating a community college and we are looking to see if young people in the juvenile justice system who earn Time Dollar can use those as credit to get into community college when it's formed. It's a great great idea and we'd like to see a lot more of that.

(Edgar) University at Albany - School of Social Welfare said they were willing to accept Time Credits as part payment of tuition, this is for a social work degree. They did it on a limited basis. I know that.

(Chris) What this really raised in a very nice way, is the degree to which Tim Banking is already about, on one level, is really about looking at resources of value and getting behind the money, you know money does so sort of so automatically that we don't really spend a lot of time analyzing flows of resources, we just hand over the money. We don't go through the laborious work. One of the reasons I think time banking is interesting and works is because it's very inefficient as currency you are forced to actually analyze resources, you're forced to have a look and say "oh these people are putting in this and those people could put in that and where is the benefit and what are the incentive" and you are forced to really pay attention to them. The possibility to actually getting into college or getting a reduction on your tuition fees that is a major benefit that could be a major incentive. So then it becomes sort of part of an analysis about what would incentivize people to do what kinds of work and aware of the resources. But then you have to ask what's in it for the school. So you have to go down this sort of journey of asking "well what's in it for?" So it is a great great idea but as with all things TimeBanking you have to ask what's in it for the school.

(Q) What does the IRS say about Time Dollars and why is Time Banking is the only complementary currency that is recognized as tax exempt?

(Chris) The tax exemption relates to specific qualities of TimeBanking. If it were used in ways that mimicked regular money it would not be tax exempt.

(Q) With all the ID theft in the world today, it seems to me that trusting others would be difficult for new members. Are there any credit checks or background checks on members?

(Edgar) There are different answers for you on that, because some programs do use background checks because some states require the use of background checks particularly where children are involved and vulnerable elders are involved. I do want to say that what you would allow any Stanger if your brother, aunt or best friend said you could trust them. What TimeBanking does is it creates a way by which people can vouch for each other and by which if they screw up that is immediately reflected so that what we found that even in neighborhoods where everyone knows everything bad about everybody we've been able to build trust. And, I can't tell you that all the people in the TimeBanks are angels because I know too much about them but I can tell you they play by the rules visa via the other members of the TimeBank.

(Chris) It really is a sort of reputation system in fact people make exchanges they build up reputations in the TimeBanks and so it is an 'changed network' they are and are not strangers because as members of the time bank they've sort of validated their contributions and so forth. Of course you always have newer members coming in and so the question is, "is a new member trustworthy?". So most TimeBanks actually do require that new members have references from existing members or just references. The other side of that, as Edgar says, is some TimeBanks specifically to choose to take in ex felons and people who would not pass credit checks and then they have policies around that. If somebody has a record that they have specific kinds of assignments that they can do and some that they can't or they do project assignments and so forth. We actually have a little booklet that we hand out which we created around the issue of liability and each TimeBank makes their own policies and decisions around that.

(Chris) Every TimeBank has its own policy in this regard. Many do use background checks. They have special policies for members who have records, such as setting boundaries around kinds of tasks that those members may or may not be permitted to do. TimeBanks USA provides a guide for new TimeBanks to think about how they want to proceed given who the members in their TimeBank will be.

(Q) What makes this system work between strangers?

(Chris) In a TimeBank the members vouch for each other. If there's a problem, then it gets back to the coordinator instantly. One role of the TimeBank coordinator and the TimeBank leadership is to handle problem situations - but to date those have been exceedingly rare.

(Q) Have you been able to identify the most important feature which contributes to creating trust among Time Bank users?

(Chris) It is a very interesting thing, Stephanie Rearick who helped to create the Dane County TimeBank which I think has been going now for 3 years and has 1500 members. At the Time Banking conference in 2009 she was one of the speakers and she said she had been involved with LETS before then so she was quite familiar with community currency she was one of the creators of Madison Dollars which was a LETS, what she said she was totally unprepared for was that she found that TB created what she called the "Economics of Generosity". She said that even knowing that in her head going in that she was totally unprepared for the actual experience of that. That every exchange has this element of generosity in it. We hear that a lot from people.

(Edgar) I would say that at least on of the key elements is the elimination of anonymity. A transaction can either be a transaction or it can birth a relationship. In fact we built small clusters, so as people come to know each other, as they work together on different projects, as they come together for monthly events or birthday parties, that sense of "I'm going to see you again" and that you are in a continuous loop it's not an isolated transaction is critical. If I'm only going to see you once, I have a choice, I can hit you over the head and take your money or I can treat you according to the golden rule. If I'm going to see you tomorrow, or if I'm going to see somebody else who is going to see you tomorrow, I'm going to think twice about that. So the whole dynamics around creating a memory loop, because you can't create trust without a memory loop. It remembers what footprints your last transaction left and how you were treated in that last transaction. I think it's the way in which Time Banking turns transactions in to relationships that creates that kind of memory trace reinforced by the software, reinforced by the sense that somehow the computer is a super ego in the sky that somehow knows what you are doing.

(Chris) Interestingly, it seems to be the hour-for-an-hour aspect of TimeBanking. It means that every exchange calls for some measure of altruism in either the giving or the receiving, because there is no way to judge whether one is giving or getting "value for money." A person gives what they can. They receive what they receive. There is generosity built in on both sides. And that leads to trust.

(Q) Where was your very first Time Bank in the US and is it still around today?

(Edgar) I started experimenting with one in North Miami at the time and St. Louis was doing something very close to what we were doing. The first 6 really came into existence as a result of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative(5) and one was in St. Louis that came out of the Grace Hill(6) and the Morris system they had there but they really didn't have a currency. A second one was in Boston, a third was in Washington, D.C. a forth was in Miami and a fifth was out in San Francisco. The Elder Plan was I think the 6th in Brooklyn

(Q) What year was that?

(Edgar) 1987

(Q) Are these Time Banks still in operation today?

(Edgar) The St. Louis one is, the Elder Plan is and isn't they have now migrated to Visiting Nurses. The one in Boston, really has a year or two ago, it was still barely going because it was a question of funding for the coordinator but others have sprung up and built on it so what you find is that even when they die that the people who are in them bring them back to life wherever they go and it springs up again. The Miami one, which was the biggest on died when funding was cut, it was HUGE after Hurricane Andrew back in 1994 and then it kept going for awhile but the Department of Elder Affairs actually cut all funding for it and they weren't able to survive so the whole question of sustainability that we've seen became a critical issue. Every community currency that can run on volunteer time for awhile and then you hit burn out, as you know. The question of how you create a sustainable infrastructure is what lead me to developing the framework of Co-production. As Willy Sutton asked where's the money. If the money is with the social service agencies and with government agencies that address social problems, then you come and say "hey do we have a deal for you, why don't you partner with the community because you will be much more effective" and all of them are under an increasing a mandate to get citizen participation and citizen engagement and civic engagement but they don't know how to do it because in effect soon or later the volunteers in the community get burned out and ticked off because they are asked to do the work the agency is funded to do. So you have that schism. What we have been gearing TimeBanking for and the reason we have evolved a theoretical frame of system change called co-production was because we were tired of seeing public programs fail and people lose confidence in the government and we were equally tired to see time banks that were trying to address these problems die because they didn't even have the minimum core funding necessary to build the infrastructure but that a partnership between the two would in fact serve both and that was why Co-production emerged and that was born as much out of the sense of justice energy I spoke to earlier and it was only in time that those seeking the connectivness of community understood that they could benefit to from adopting and embracing co-production.

(Q) Is there any a direct partnership or integration between Time Banking and the Federal Government?

(Chris & Edgar) No.

(Q) In our society, everyone has time to spare and underused skills. The fact is that these items are so plentiful across our society means we don't place a high price or value on them. However, in a time bank, value is realized and gained from these plentiful assets. Is it a true statement that "Time banks gives value to what society sees as not having value."

(Chris) Yes.

(Q) I recently wrote about a new Time Bank in New York City. https://www.timebanksnyc.org/

TimeBanksNYC (TBNYC) is a new citywide program connecting individuals who recognize that each person has talents to share, and that the overall community is strengthened when neighbors help one another with a wide range of services. For each hour a TBNYC member spends providing a service or sharing a skill with another member, she or he earns a "time credit" for the exchange. This "time credit" can then be redeemed for a service from someone else in the network, and so on. For more on TBNYC call 866-244-6469

This was sponsored by NYC Service, Department for the Aging and service exchanges are available in all 5 Boroughs. Learn more here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/timebanks/html/home/home.shtml It seems to me that with such a large and diverse population participating in this program that an organization of this size could really change the way many future services are distributed in NYC. What insight can you share with us regarding this operation and did you personally have a hand in getting this one started?

(Chris) The leadership of the TimeBank attended the TimeBanks USA conference and took the one-day pre-conference training. She described the training to us as "outstanding." We adapted the TimeBanks USA Community Weaver software for use by a large number of neighborhoods, all under one TimeBank umbrella. In addition, the leadership told us they received help and advice from other TimeBanks.

(Q) By creating this type of service exchange and giving value to tasks that would otherwise go unused, are you turning the tables on the modern day money society?

(Chris) You know the term "slow food?" TimeBanking is the equivalent of "slow community." It's all about taking time to be with others and to enjoy taking the time to be in relationship of giving and receiving.

(Q) After so many years of working with Time Banking, is there an ultimate goal, outcome or situation you have in mind, for example a point in the future when Time Banking encircles the planet and is common in almost all countries, cities and regions?

(Chris) It's getting there! I can see TimeBanking being joined by a whole array of complementary and alternative currencies to achieve different outcomes. I have hoped that TimeBanking and other alternative currencies will work together - and still believe that will happen, but only when complementary currencies become more familiar to people everywhere.

(Q) What are CareBanks?(3)

(Chris) A special kind of TimeBank that calls on members - or a small cluster of individuals - to earn Time Dollars on a regular basis so that the member, or one member in the cluster, can have an assurance of receiving help when really needed.

(Q) What kind of larger scale issues could Time Banking help us solve? (pollution, poverty, malnutrition. etc)

(Chris) I don't see Time Dollars tackling larger scale issues in a direct, head-on kind of way. I see them helping to change the nature of a community, the ways that people relate to each other, the esteem in which they hold each other - and I see those changes then changing what will be acceptable to them, and what will not be acceptable.

(Q) Less focus on national currency savings and more focus on giving everyone value using a community currency approach.....what kind of community will this create when citizens are not working to buy that new car or increase their credit card limits?

(Chris) I'm going to take the first step on that. Our media are tremendously powerful influence on people's lives and are markets are too. Just to pull something out of the air, an example is women going and paying $350 and $400 for a purse which lasts a year and then they go and buy another one and another one. The messages that are feed into us are so powerful and Time Banking definitely has a different kind of energy and nurtures a different kind of way of working between people.

(Edgar) When I went to the London School of Economics, they asked how can a currency possibly work because for anything to be sustained, benefit received has to exceed cost. That is marginal benefit has to exceed marginal cost for each additional unit of energy you put in. What was the sort of break through realization was that there were two kinds of benefit, one was external benefit...what you can exchange things for in the external world. The other was intrinsic benefit, or what kind of reward would reinforce your sense of value of self esteem. Teachers take lower salaries than they could learn in other situations, all of us who choose to devote a part of our lives to making the world better are saying a part of our pay or what we earn in psychic benefit. So it became very clear that to the extent that Time Banking amplifies your sense of self esteem and amplifies the reward that goes with volunteering that it's external value what you could buy with it would become less important than even of trivial importance. You see the same thing happening if you are a Billionaire maybe but up to a certain point each additional increment of money gives you a sense of security and reinforces but the chief value of money is external and the core value of Time Banking a the sense of reduced aloneness in the sense of self esteem and self worth that it feeds. I think there is a basic human desire and a basic human need to feel that your existence matter and you make a difference that you're being here on this planet matter to someone else. That is a very powerful drive and that is the drive which we want to reinforce.

(Chris) A more caring community where people know they are valued.

Very often when you start talking about time dollars, you almost always hear something like, "are you telling me that a neurosurgeon will only get one time dollar just the same as a Gardner" So then you have to sort of say yes but we are not talking about the economy. It is an interesting thing that you asked earlier on about what it takes to get a Time Bank up and running, and one of the major things that people have to learn is how to talk about time banking in a way that is believable for other people. It's not always easy to do.

(Edgar) We all live in two worlds, we don't realize. As an illustration, let's just take one chore that people still do for themselves such as brushing your teeth. If you had to do that as a market transaction, you couldn't afford to pay an oral hygienist, to come to the house, to brush your teeth to pay for their malpractice insurance, their social security, their benefits. A large part of what we do and learn to do just as we take for granted the air we breath, the water we drink the level of safety in neighborhoods, we take for granted a whole level of economic activity that is keeping the whole society going. There was an economist who measured the amount of un paid labor that now goes on to keep seniors out of nursing homes. By spouses, by kinfolk, by neighbors and friends. When I first looked at that, valued at $10 bucks an hours which is more than minimum wage but less than what you would pay a house keeper or agency to send someone in. Originally it was around $250 or $270 Billion dollars each year. The latest figures I've seen which were revised around 2004 was $350 Billion annually just in the United States. It's not an insignificant amount of unpaid labor. If you just had a small percentage point drop in that think what it would do for the cost of Medicaid, Medicare and health costs. So there is a whole vast economy out there that we pretend doesn't exist. But when we blow it, mess it up or let it disintegrate we have costs that we are not ready for and that is true of pollution and that's also true of central pollution.

(Q) Is there an example you can point to anywhere in the world right now where time banking has altered the societal landscape & outwardly changed the community?

(Chris) Currently, it happens on a small scale. And that might always be so. Communities have become more peaceable, more caring. Divisions between ethnicities have been overcome. Communities where people thought they could do nothing to create change have found that they have a lot they can do. TimeBanks change systems and social structures slowly, almost surreptitiously. But in the end, the change can be pretty dramatic.

(Q) You made this statement in a previous interview, "How not to live as strangers but a large extended family." Do all forms of community currency such as Berkshares, Ithaca Hours and even RiverHOURS help contribute to a stronger community?

(Chris) They certainly can do so. A lot will depend on the intentionality behind the currency. I do think that TimeBanking has community-building at the center of what the currency is all about, in a way that's probably unique.

(Q) Do new users realize after participating that their time has real value? Is there sort of an 'ah ha' moment for most new users when they finally understand how great the Time Bank is?

(Chris) Many do.

(Q) Does the time banking practice leave users with a real sense of worth and respect?

(Chris) For many, yes, they do. That can depend on how often they engage with the TimeBank and how they earn and spend their Time Dollars.

(Q) I read that last year the Lutheran Services in America began brainstorming with you about Time Banking and CareBanks. Does your organization have direct partnerships with any of the large religious organizations in America?

(Chris) Not yet. It will happen eventually - and we look forward to the day when it does.

(Q) What are some of the most interesting time based transactions you have ever encountered?

(Chris) I'm actually thinking of the young people in Rhode Island. You know better than I do Edgar, I did not actually meet them, These are kids who were medically defined as having schizophrenia, bi-polar or extreme autism. They would have normally had to be institutionalized because of how acute that was, we are not talking minor [medical issues] A parent support group has emerged where the parents together have in effect formed an extended family. The kids themselves, I've sat in with them, they have their own secessions. They talk about what it's like to be on the medications and they talk about what it's like to have a sister who one minute is smiling and the next minute she's got a knife and she's going at your throat. Now they've created a whole, what they call "Voices", and they put on performances and they go from high school to high school sharing their stories on what it's meant to be there for each other and not to feel rejected but in fact they have mutual acceptance. That has been awesome.

I remember in Los Angeles at one point there was, in the early days of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a local health organization, which was subsequently bought up by a commercial operation, and so they stopped the time bank, I remember them saying kids would take seniors to church in and watch their cars to make sure nothing happened to them in order to get their tattoos medically removed. Well I couldn't make that up you see! I remember hearing up in Maine that somebody put in he teach people how to carve avocado pits. Probably not a mass market for that..

(Chris) Also the fashion show, it's not that this is now so unusual, this has become one of the things that time banks do quite commonly. I remember the very first one just how amazing it was. It was in a community that was so divided and so tense around untrust, a lack of trust so they put on a fashion show, Time Banks put on a fashion show and the members all contributed their time to make it happen. It was the teenagers and the seniors. It was so amazing because they put on hip hop music and these seniors came out in these amazing clothes that they had brought out of their closets. The teenagers where wearing their wild clothes and it was just an amazing thing and the community was just so elated with itself. There was cheering and laughter...it was just an amazing thing.

(Edgar) In Madison, they came up with a Pet Parade! So you just don't know what people are going to invent, I guess this my answer. But what this does is unleashes enormous creativity and ingenuity

(Chris) One more. Also what we are sharing with you are more group projects and I think that is a very important piece of TimeBanking how as TimeBanks mature they tend to develop richer and richer group projects. In Sobrante Park, the one in Oakland, one of the reasons for creating the TimeBank was the gang violence between Hispanic gang members and African American gang members. Apparently for some year there's has been this weird tradition, where on a day in May, I think it's the 11th of May, the gangs really had a kind of shootout kind of day, they battled it out. So the members of the TimeBank, the young people and the seniors again, and I think it might have grown out of initially the idea of having a fashion show, but now they have an anti-gang day. They partner with one of the local schools and all day long while this gang activity is terrorizing the neighborhood, they have celebrations of community in the school, in the school auditorium. The seniors prepare all the food and the young people prepare all the entertainment. They keep going at it all day, a celebration of their community.

(Edgar) A couple of other examples: There has been child birth in Maine paid for with Time Credits, paid to the midwife for all the training. There have been wedding and funerals. I've seen an 85 year old former nun changing the oil and doing basically what Jiffy Lube does for members of the TimeBank. You just don't know what you are going to see.

(Chris) The ones that are most interesting are not the strange or quirky exchanges. It's the ones that transform people's lives that are most interesting to me. Like the elderly woman who earns Time Dollars doing small sewing jobs. She sews lost buttons back onto shirts and other items of clothing, and in return she can call on members of her TimeBank to take her shopping, or take on chores that would be hard to do. She has the help she needs. She can feel good about asking. She is connected to a support system of people who value what she can do. Or the young person who earned Time Dollars as a juror in a youth court, and learned in the process that choosing to go down a path of being helpful or being destructive is a choice that he had the power to make.