John Turmel
science forum Guru
Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 424
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 Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 3:16 pm Post subject:
TURMEL: Chicago Reader article on Dane Timebank
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JCT: There aren't too many happy endings in the financial
world, unless it's the successes of social currency
timebanks:
JCT: An important songwriter for the rebels within this
generation so inculcated of the Borg drone mentality that
"Resistance is futile."
| Quote: | Date: Sun May 21, 2006 1:50pm(PDT)
Subject: Chicago Reader article
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SR: Hello all, There's a great article on the Dane County
Timebank, with a mention of the Chicago Time Dollar Tutoring
project, in the These Parts (annual regional section)
section of this week's Chicago Reader.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/theseparts/timebank/
Enjoy! -Stephanie, Dane Co. Timebank
JCT: Thanks for glad tidings.
Chicago Reader.
Doing the Barter System One Better
By S.L. Wisenberg
I'll teach you to throat sing if she teaches me to crochet.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/theseparts/timebank/timebank1.jpg
Dane County Timebank Members Dee Sanders, Stephanie Rearick,
Jeff and Sherri Shokler, Mandy Coboh, and Terrie Anderson
(Photo by Robert Drea)
THEY STAND OVER the table like surgeons, white masks over
their noses and mouths, latex gloves covering their hands.
Terrie Anderson is stirring a tub of gray grout powder while
Sherri Shokler pours in what looks like milk from a thrift-
store cream pitcher. The white liquid is grout additive.
"You want a frosting consistency or a commercial peanut
butter consistency," Shokler advises. "Like Jif," chimes in
her husband, Jeff, who's crouched nearby, watching intently.
This is Madison, they have to be specific about the type of
peanut butter, otherwise Anderson might be thinking of the
natural stuff with the layer of oil on top, or the kind you
grind yourself.
Anderson, an educational consultant, is learning how to
grout the pieces of broken dishes she glued onto a mirror
frame at a mosaicking class taught by Sherri, an artist who
manages an office that promotes Frank Lloyd Wright
buildings, and Jeff, an archaeologist turned university
administrator. No money changes hands, however she and the
Shoklers are participants in a new local venture, the Dane
County Timebank.
The concept is simple. Each member of the bank donates time
doing something he or she is good at, be it installing a
sink, baby-sitting, dog walking, driving, or planning a
timebank meeting, and in return can receive the same number
of hours of services from any other member. The bank keeps
track,one hour equals one virtual dollar.
JCT: The historic flaw that bars doctors, lawyers, dentists,
professionals from full participation. But the flaw is cured
by the use of tokens so professionals can command their true
fair worth by the local community.
"It's not a barter system," Jeff is quick to say. Bartering
implies a one-on-one trade of goods and services, whereas
time banking is asymmetrical. Thus A helps B, who helps C,
who helps D, who helps B.
Reasons for joining range from practical to personal.
Vishada Johnson joined because she needs a ride to the
grocery store for food for herself and three young children,
following the recent demise of the free Women's Transit
Authority. Mandy Coboh, a high school sophomore who signed
up in order to conquer her shyness and get to know the
community better, studies French and Spanish with time-bank
members. Both she and Johnson donate child care; Coboh also
tutors in math. Member Ben Schumaker points out with pride
that eight people quickly responded to a recent call from an
elderly member who wanted volunteers to sit with her.
In the old days of barn raisings and quilting bees, there
was a natural community of mutual aid, where everyone helped
everyone else and thought nothing of it, or at least that's
the idealized version. These days neighborliness is mostly
absent because neighbors themselves are absent most of the
day. So why not a more formal system that plugs people into
a community, that, as member Lisa Wiese puts it, builds up
"social capital"?
JCT: Especially if your Hours are worth the same 60 minutes
as Hours used by timebanks in the rest of the world.
Wiese, a physicist turned food coop activist, is on the
"kitchen cabinet," or governing board, of the Northside
Neighbor-to-Neighbor Timebank, which operates under the
umbrella of the Dane County Timebank. (Anderson is also on
the cabinet, and Jeff Shokler just finished his term.) The
north side is well away from the University of Wisconsin
campus and downtown, and its dwellers proudly point to its
abundance of parks, cheaper-than average starter homes, and
ethnic and economic diversity. The area includes middle-
class households and pockets of affluence but on the whole
is poorer than the rest of Madison. According to Jim Powell
of the Northside Planning Council, there are also more
elderly people and more young children than in the rest of
town, more families headed by women, and more African-
Americans and Hmong.
The bank started last fall as a pilot project with the help
of the council and was later expanded to include members
throughout Madison and Dane County. The interim director is
Stephanie Rearick, a coffeehouse owner and musician who's
active in another alternative program, Madison Hours, under
which participants buy goods and services directly from one
another using local currency earned by providing them. The
time bank's more ambitious, she says; it's plugged into a
national network, Time Banks USA, which provides advice and
resources. (According to the national group, there are more
than 300 time banks worldwide, including Time Dollar
Tutoring, a Chicago program in which students earn computers
in exchange for tutoring.)
In Dane County so far there are around 270 members who
together have earned about 820 time dollars or hours. The
Dane County Timebank's received a $6,000 grant from the
city, $2,500 from the county, and currently is working to
include current and former jail inmates in the program.
Dane County inmates are already eligible to volunteer at
social service agencies, they racked up 20,000 hours in
2004, working nonpaying jobs that range from loading boxes
at Second Harvest Food Bank of Southern Wisconsin to helping
people with their tax returns at Centro Hispano of Dane
County. The volunteers gain skills and sometimes jobs when
their sentences are completed. Under the proposed program
the rewards would be more quantifiable: inmates could earn
time dollars volunteering at these same agencies and other
places and use them to get help preparing for jobs, rides to
interviews, or services to benefit their families.
This month the Dane County Timebank received a $30,000 grant
from the Madison Community Foundation, and with other grants
and donations, Rearick is hoping for a $70,000 budget and
paid staff. Currently she receives a stipend and time
dollars, which she's so far exchanged for a haircut,
gardening help, and picture framing. Another time bank
member, social worker turned stay-at-home mom Ginger Seery,
writes grant proposals in exchange for time dollars.
To become a member, you fill out a form indicating what you
can offer and what you might need. A reference is required,
and Rearick performs criminal background checks. The bank
doesn't accept people convicted of first- or second-degree
sexual assault on children. It pays volunteer liability
insurance, coming to about $2 per member. Work isn't
guaranteed. Person A might paint F's kitchen but never find
anyone to teach him throat singing; person B might have no
takers for her pie-baking class. The Shoklers went to the
time bank and found a do-it-yourselfer willing to replace
their rickety wooden stoop, a task they figure would have
set them back $1,000 otherwise. Instead they spent about
$266 on materials and 12 time dollars. Jeff helped and
learned something about carpentry in the process.
Sometimes you get what you pay for. Anderson, wiping the
drying grout from her mosaic project, says, "I know somebody
with a leaky faucet. It started leaking again' after being
fixed by a time banker. The woman with the sink took it in
stride. "She said, "I'll just call a different person."
The day before, a mile or so away, a stranger arrived at
Ginger Seery's ranch house: novice time banker Jody Arafat,
who'd come to help with a task Seery hates, raking her lawn.
"She could have been a serial killer," joked Seery. Joined
from time to time by Seery's four-year-old daughter, in a
pink sunbonnet and carrying a mini plastic rake, Seery and
Arafat heaped up dead grass and debris; Arafat gave advice
on an iris that had failed to thrive and offered to share
some ostrich plume plants.
As they raked the two women discussed the Middle East, local
elementary school curricula, and the possibility that their
two boys, both Star Wars fanatics, might play together.
Seery spoke of the isolation she feels as a new stay-at-home
mom, Arafat of having temporarily served on a jury that
considered the case of a gang shooting. She'd been upset to
learn that a couple of the accused young men lived nearby,
and pledged to do something to help local youth and the
community. The time bank was her first step. Not all
exchanges are recorded in the time bank. Sherri Shokler says
that a neighbor's going to help her train her excitable
Chihuahua, Mr., off the books. Sometimes, she says,
neighbors still just do things for each other.
JCT: So even a timebank with a flaw does good. And the flaw
disappears with the issuance of paper timedollars. |
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