![]() ![]() ![]() Just by joining you receive two Time Bank Hours to “spend,” and you accumulate more hours each time you perform a service for others… You can also waive the $25 annual fee by offering four hours of service to the administration of the time bank… this could be copying and folding brochures, fliering, offering orientations, holding a potluck, etc. You can offer that service to other members. Request that a member come and fold while you enjoy your book. ![]() For example, say you have a big pile of laundry to fold but would rather be reading. In exchange for hours doing something you like, you can later get services for yourself. ![]() (Transactions and contact information are confidential.) Once you’re a member, you list your Offers, the services you’re willing to provide. LISA: Members join the time bank, providing two references and paying the $25 annual fee. MARK: OK, let’s say I sign up, and pay my annual $25 (real cash) membership fee, what happens next? Do I start out with a certain number of Time Bank Hours, or do I first have to find someone willing to purchase my goods/services through the system? LISA: Yes, I’m sure the group would consider it. MARK: Not very catchy… Would you be open to changing it, if there were an awesome suggestion? LISA: The units are called Time Bank Hours. You can trade the currency of hours with anyone who is activated in the system. Everyone’s hour is worth the same and traded over the software. HEATHER: It’s like a FIAT currency, in which money is created from nothing and the belief in it is the value. On the software, we list OFFERS (services we’re willing to do) and REQUESTS (things we’d like someone else to do for us). LISA: We use a software from hOurworld, an established time bank in Maine. MARK: So, it’s software based? There isn’t a tangible currency? Then, hopefully, we’ll sign people up… If people want to read up beforehand, they can check out the website. LISA: In the Thursday orientation, we’ll give concrete examples, share an include an introductory slide show, and explain how the online software works. MARK: What will you be covering during the session? LISA: I’ve been actively making time bank trades through the system since the fall, and I help out by doing orientations on the hEY software, like the one at 1:30 on Thursday at Beezy’s. It’s true that I advocated for a local currency when I served on the Ypsi 2020 Task Force, but the people who got this time bank off the ground are Jeff Yoder, Julianne Bonta, Heather Wysor, Monica King, and Jen Whaley, among others. LISA: Actually, I’ve only been a minor player in the launch of hOur Exchange Ypsilanti. I wasn’t aware, however, that, after years of trying to identify the right model, you’d actually launched something… What’s the status? MARK: For the past half dozen years or so, if not more, Lisa, you’ve been pushing the idea forward that Ypsilanti needs a time bank, a kind of alternate currency through which people in the area can exchange goods and services without resorting to cash. In hopes of finding out more, I reached out this evening to Heather Wysor and Lisa Bashert, two of the women responsible for for the system. (For those of you not familiar with the concept, that’s a system of reciprocal service exchange in which units of time serve as currency.) It’s called hOur Exchange Ypsilanti (hEY), and there’s a 1:30 orientation session Thursday, January 9, at Beezy’s. You might already know this, but I just discovered that Ypsilanti now has a functioning time bank. ![]()
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