Community Resilience, Self-Reliance, Renewable Energy & Cooperation
Local Currency: Powerful Tool for Strengthening Community Self-Reliance
Economic localization is a key aspect of the Transition process. Local currency and exchange systems (also known as community or complementary currencies) have the capacity to strengthen the local economy, build community, and foster environmental sustainability by:
There are many different types of local currencies. Some examples in Wisconsin are:
Dane County Timebank
Madison Hours
Please use this forum to discuss and learn about local currencies and share resources that you have found. If your community is developing a local currency, please share your experiences here.
- personalizing economic transactions
- supporting local businesses
- promoting community self-reliance
- keeping money circulating in the local economy
- creating a buffer from the extremes of the global economy
- matching unmet needs with untapped resources
- giving economic opportunity to people disadvantaged in the formal economy (unemployed, youth, seniors, immigrants, ex-prisoners, homeless, etc.)
- encouraging DIY and cottage industries
- reducing the use of fossil fuels in transporting goods
- increasing awareness about spending habits
There are many different types of local currencies. Some examples in Wisconsin are:
Dane County Timebank
Madison Hours
Please use this forum to discuss and learn about local currencies and share resources that you have found. If your community is developing a local currency, please share your experiences here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nicole Bickham on -
Right now a group informally knows as Milwaukee Exchange is working to create a local currency system for the Milwaukee area. We started meeting in November 2008. To learn more or get involved, visit http://groups.google.com/group/MkeExchange.
Attached is a table we created that compares several different kinds of local currencies. - Attachments:
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Permalink Reply by Lowell Rheinheimer on -
Thanks for posting this. About two weeks ago 24 people from around the country gathered in LaFarge for a 2 day seminar to re-examine the nature and management of money. The seminar, called The Colors of Money, was led by Arthur Edwards of the Center for Associative Economics in Canterbury, England, and led to some very interesting insights. One, of course, is that money is invisible but how we have structured our relationship to money serves as a revealer of our collective (disordered at the moment) thinking. We also examined how capital arises (freely whenever goods or services are sold but originating in the creative spirit) and what a healthy deployment of capital would look like (a good portion would go to activities that strengthen and invigorate more creativity not merely more industrial production.)
It is very interesting to note how so many issues (money, community resilience, cooperation, renewable energy, organic agriculture, our own creativity) all need to be acknowledged as interrelated and addressed simultaneously. There is so much good stuff community-activating energy arising right now. I hope we can all stay connected and cross pollinate each other.
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