Timebanking, I think, is a really fun experiment in building community. The Transition Town initiative has found it to be the web of support for all of the work that is done through that organization, supporting and binding people together. And as we work, we build community. Because, isn’t that how you really get to know people? To work with them? To find their gifts, their frailties, what makes them tick? Transition wants to build community through co-production, rather than co-consuming. And timebanking is one mechanism for making that happen.
The co-production element of building community is in no small part due to finding people’s gifts and allowing them expression. And isn’t that exactly what we are doing? Returning gift into exchanges…exchanges that have been monetized (I would argue inappropriately) by our culture to the extent that we pay for dozens of things that our grandparents and great-grandparents did for themselves.
Leave a Reply