Why Hours in the Time Bank Can be Time Well Spent
The Observer, 8 July 2001
Andrew Bibby on a community scheme paying dividends
For people living in the Gorbals, time can, quite literally, be money. This inner-city area on the south bank of the Clyde in Glasgow is one of the latest places in Britain to launch its own time bank, an ingenious scheme that converts the hours which people spend within their community voluntarily helping each other into a new type of tradable currency.
Since its launch at me start of the year, the Gorbals time bank has attracted about 60 members, who between them have 'earned' and 'spent' about a hundred hours of time.
'It's been very successful. For example, one older lady who had been waiting four years for her kitchen to be decorated joined the time bank and got it done within a month,' says Colin McGowan, the scheme's co-ordinator.
'In exchange, she sits in with a disabled person living close to her, befriending her - that's what she puts back in.'
As with traditional bank accounts, the Gorbals time bank records each member's credit or debit balance of 'hours', with each new transaction carefully recorded on computer. Colin McGowan, who works for the area's regeneration organisation Gorbals Initiative, puts members in touch with each other, and sees the time bank as one way of helping to rebuild the old community spirit that the area lost in the extensive urban redevelopment of the 1960s.
'A lot of people have been living in high-rise places where they never knew their neighbours. My job is to bring people together again,' he says.
The idea of trading in time came to Britain about four years ago from the US, where the community activist Edgar Cahn has developed a network of similar community-based schemes trading 'time dollars'.
Joy Rogers of Gloucester-based Fair Shares, a local charity that launched the first British time bank in October 1998, says that the scheme can help people who have been marginalised by the traditional economy. 'It enables people who feel that they have nothing to give to recognise that they have something to offer. But unlike traditional volunteering, this is reciprocal. Reciprocity is very important'
Fair Shares, together with the New Economics Foundation, recently launched an umbrella organisation -Time Banks UK (www.timebanks.co.uk) which, with government funding, is trying to develop the idea.
According to NEF's Sarah Burns there are 18 active schemes operating in Britain, with a further 20 or so being planned or in development, often with help from community development agencies and local authorities.
Support sometimes comes from unexpected places: in Catford, south London a local GP was instrumental in establishing the local time bank, convinced that healthy community networking could also have a direct effect on individual health.
Timekeeper, the software necessary to administer time banks, which was originally devised by Edgar Cahn, is available at low cost from Time Banks UK, which also provides advice for any would-be 'time broker' prepared to coordinate a new scheme.
But is all this infrastructure really necessary to achieve the sort of good neighbourliness that surely used to be taken for granted?
According to Joy Rogers, time banks are one response to recent changes in society. Twenty or 30 years ago people often lived in the same towns as their parents and grandparents. Nowadays, people move around much more.
Time broking is really a mechanism for creating a stronger sense of community, helping people who feel isolated, she says.
'Time broking is really a mechanism for creating a sense of community' she says.