Bartering among friends is as common as pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but a new development in the barter world is springing up in communities the world wide.
Timebanks are an organized community barter program. According to Timebanks.org,
At its most basic level, Time banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the Time Bank as a Time Dollar. Then you have a Time dollar to spend on having someone doing something for you. It’s a simple idea, but it has powerful ripple effects in building community connections.
Each Time Bank has a website where you list what you would like to do for other members. You look up Time Bank services online or call a community coordinator to do it for you. You earn Time Dollars after each service you perform and then you get to spend it on whatever you want from the listings.
With Time Banking, you will be working with a small group of committed individuals who are joined together for a common good. It connects you to the best in people because it creates a system that connects unmet needs with untapped resources. To see what happens each week when you are part of Time Bank is deeply fulfilling, especially if you are helping to make it run.
While TimeBank.org relies on a Time currency to keep track of transactions, many communities have formed loose groups of people interested in helping each other out.
Time Banks also go where no barter exchange has gone before: to the consumer. At the level of a Time Bank, anyone can participate, while barter exchanges have been fairly exclusive in the past, offering memberships only to businesses with a product or service to sell, with Time Banks filling a niche the barter industry has not touched in the past.
We at Barter News Weekly would like to see a good example of a barter exchange that has incorporated this level of barter in to their business model. If you know of any, please let us know at info@barternewsweekly.com.
