Choices Time Dollar Bank

Back to Simpler Times

May 15, 2003

Back to simpler times -- when people did for others in their neighborhoods, stores didn't send their profits out of state, and folks spent most of their money where they lived. At a time when real "dollars" are backed by neither silver nor gold, the fixed value of an hour gives confidence to some.

Participants in Choices Time Dollar Bank sign up to offer their talents, from companionship to yard work, in exchange for credits. To start with, each will get one hour worth one credit.

About 21 cities and towns in the United States and Canada have local currency programs, according to the E.F. Schumacher Society of Great Barrington, Mass., which tracks them. About 150 other programs that run on "time credits" without currency operate around the world, estimates the Time Dollar Institute in Washington.

"Everybody's talking about the problems of globalization," said Lewis D. Solomon, a professor at George Washington University Law School and author of a book promoting local currencies. "This is one concrete thing to help strengthen local communities and neighborhoods economically."

In Chicago, a program called Time Dollar Tutoring claims to have placed 4,075 computers in low-income homes by using elementary pupils to tutor their peers. Credits from Ithaca HOURS, an 11-year-old program in Ithaca, N.Y., on which Baltimore Hours is largely based, are accepted at 400 local businesses, including fine restaurants.
In the Baltimore area, more than 200 residents of Pleasant View Gardens, the low-income housing complex built to replace the Lafayette Courts project in East Baltimore, take part in a "time bank" that allows them to trade services such as baby-sitting. They also use hours to buy donated items such as shoes and computers.
A Severna Park organization has run a time-credit bank for the past 10 years, focusing on help for elderly and disabled people who want to stay in their homes.
The father of the modern-day "time bank" movement is Edgar S. Cahn, a law professor and founder of the national Legal Services Corporation, who hit upon the concept while recovering from a heart attack in 1980.
He wanted to find a way that the ill, incapacitated or underemployed could accept help without feeling useless -- and where hard-to- quantify services such as companionship, care taking and favor-doing could have economic value.
Cahn wrote a book about the idea, called No More Throw-Away People.
He also established a Web site promoting the cause, called Timedollar.org
He counts a "youth court" in Washington -- where troubled teens earn credit hours as jurors of peers -- and the Chicago tutoring program as evidence that time-dollar programs can yield results. The largest time-dollar program, in St. Louis, has 8,000 members and serves 19 neighborhoods.
How Choices Time Bank Works
Choices Time bank don't use real money. Instead they encourage people to make deposits and withdrawals of their time.
In Choices Time Bank, participants earn credits for helping each other - one hour of your time entitles you to an hour of someone else's time.
Credits are deposited centrally in Choices Time Bank and withdrawn when you need help yourself.
Help is exchanged through a broker who links people up and keeps a record of transactions through the Timekeeper software.
Unlike real money, anyone and everyone can earn time credits - no one is excluded. Almost everybody - young or old - has something to offer, from making supportive phone calls to neighbors to running small errands. Most importantly, everyone's time is worth the same.

Choices Time Bank is based on a couple of simple ideas. The first is that one work hour is a value unit in it self.
In the margin of the activity that it performs. The second is that if you devote hours to performing others' tasks, others can devote hours to performing your tasks for you. An entity, the bank, manages the credit and debit of hours and the list of tasks on offer and demand.

Thank you,