Time Banks and Community Currencies

When people have time and talent but the people around them don't have money to pay them for their services, then their time and talent goes to waste. Here are couple of ideas for conserving those precious natural resources:

[Time Banking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_banking) is a way to exchange services using units of time as currency. You spend an hour doing something useful for me and I'll spend an hour for you: that's time bartering. You spend an hour doing something for me and the time bank will record a credit for you and a debit for me. You can use that credit to get someone to do something for you, and I will need to do something for someone else to clear the debit from my account.  [TimeBanks] (http://timebanks.org/) is an organizaation that helps people set up community time banks.

A [local currency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency) is another way to correct the problem of supply and demand in the absence of money. The experiment has been tried in a number of places, and has often been successful.  [Here's a recipe] (http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-to-start-a-community-currency) for creating a community currency. [Berkshares](http://www.berkshares.org/whatareberkshares.htm) is an experiment that's been useful in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.






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