It’s time for a Time Bank in Cleveland Heights

Cleveland Heights residents are invited to a public meeting to discuss establishing a community Time Bank, on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. in Meeting Room A at the Lee Road Library, 2345 Lee Road.

Time banks are local service exchange systems in which time is the unit of currency. For every hour you spend doing a service for a time bank member, you receive that much in time credits that can be spent on services you need from fellow members.

Leah Davis, coordinator of the Akron Time Bank and staffperson with the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, will speak about the system, answer questions and offer suggestions for launching a program in Cleveland Heights.

A time bank is one of several types of local complementary alternative currencies designed to strengthen and shield the local community from external economic conditions.

Ideas behind time banking include the following:

  • Abundance: We all have valuable things to offer the community. Together, we can meet one anothers' needs.
  • Recognition: We need to have our contributions recognized and valued for what they are.
  • Reciprocity: We all rely one another to offer our own gifts in grateful response to gifts received.
  • Relationships: Any work we do should emerge from a story about how we all relate to one another, and what we each have to offer—and receive.

Time banks exist in 27 nations, with several hundred systems through out the U.S., including in Akron, Cleveland, Kent, Twinsburg and Ravenna in Northeast Ohio.

For more information about the Feb. 11 meeting, contact Susan Miller at millerbowen@gmail.com or John L. Clark at jlc6@po.cwru.edu.

Greg Coleridge

Greg Coleridge is director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee and member of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy collective.

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Volume 7, Issue 2, Posted 12:08 PM, 01.30.2014