Crowd Sourcing Life: Time Banks

Ever heard of a time bank? It’s a pretty cool concept.

A time bank is a system where “time” is currency. In other words, you pay with time…and you are paid with time.

Here’s how it works.

You spend an hour doing something for someone in your community. Maybe an elderly person needs their couches moved so they can do their spring cleaning. You go to their house and you move their couches for them.

When you complete the job, the hour you put in earns you “one dollar” in the time bank. You can then spend that dollar on someone else’s service.
And it doesn’t have to be the elderly person. It can be anyone involved in the time bank.

So maybe you use your time dollar to hire some college student to wash your dog.

It sounds like a crazy throwback to bartering to some people, but time banks–operating in 22 countries and 6 continents–have profound effects.

Mainly, they connect people around the act of service.

But more than that, they create a sense of equality that is often lost in real-world communities marked by social classes.

It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, your service is of equal value. And it doesn’t matter if your service is considered a white collar or blue collar service. An hour of tutoring someone in advanced calculus or an hour of changing the oil in someone’s car is worth the same amount–“a dollar”.

If enough people invest in the time bank, their collaboration helps restore their own sense of “smalltown community” (often lost due to urbanization and technological development).

Even if time banking isn’t for you, it might be fun to browse the website of a timebank near you…if for nothing else than getting a little inspiration about sticking together.