I do an hour’s lawn-mowing for someone in my neighbourhood. In return I get an hour’s free advice from a lawyer in town. That, at least, is the principle behind Timebanking, a system which bypasses money in favour of using people’s labour as a unit of currency. The seeming disparity in skill levels involved in that example is due to the most basic Timebanking principle: everyone is worth the same.
Timebanking as we know it today was begun in Japan by author and social commentator Teruko Mizushima in 1973 and has spread to more than 40 countries around the world. The movement here is small but growing.
According to Tai Tokerau co-ordinator Janey Pares Edney, co-ordinator of the Whangārei Urban and North Timebank, there are around 25 active Timebanks in the country with more than 4000 members between them.
Services are offered or sought via Timebank websites. At the time of writing, Wellington’s had someone looking for supervised e-scooter practice and someone needing bendy wire for an art project. On offer, among other things, were pet photography and help planning your tramping trip. Skill categories on which Timebankers could call included legal, financial and graphic design services, entertainment, car care, carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, childcare, pet care, sewing, diet and nutrition advice. Other care sections offered companionship and Covid response assistance.
Timebanking is not bartering. It is not swapping. It is not a direct exchange from one person to another. Despite the use of financial language – credits, banking, spending – it does not involve money. When someone does something for someone else for one hour they get an hour’s credit in their account. They can use that to access someone else’s services for something they need. You don’t need any credits to start with. You can spend a whole lot of time and then pay it back later.
For Raglan Timebank co-cordinator Tania Ashman, one of the programme’s greatest virtues is that everyone’s time has equal value. “It does people’s heads in and sometimes you spend a lot of time talking about that.”
She also acknowledges and is comfortable with the concept’s limitations. “It won’t buy you insurance or a house or run a car. But it will provide assistance and the ability to provide and receive help and knowledge.”
She describes one way in which it worked for her. “Some people needed to borrow a vehicle. We knew them and we lent our van to them. The van isn’t a member of Timebank. I am. So I can only charge for my time organising it: responding to the request, talking about how you drive and when we wanted it back.” And that’s what happened. The van itself existed outside the transaction.
Hamilton City civic engagement advisor Emma McGuirk.
Hamilton City civic engagement adviser Emma McGuirk doesn’t have as much time to bank as she did when she co-founded the Dunedin Timebank, but she was inspired in 2017 to complete a PhD thesis on the movement.
“I think it has been very much driven by passionate individuals, like key organisers, who in many cases had a history of community development or community organising,” says McGuirk.
In particular, she notes the work of the late Margaret Jefferies, who started New Zealand’s first Timebank in Lyttelton in 2005, after being exposed to the concept and converted during time spent in the US. There she heard movement guru Edgar Cahn, who developed Mizushima’s ideas and formalised much of current Timebank philosophy. He defined its five core values in his book No More Throw-Away People:
1. We all have something of value to share with others;
2. There are some forms of work that money will not easily pay for, like building strong families or revitalising neighbourhoods. Time credits reward that work;
3. Paying it forward ensures that, together, we help each other build the world we will live in;
4. Helping each other, we re-weave communities of support, strength and trust;
5. We respect where people are in the moment, not where we hope they will be in the future.
Timebank is, in short, focused on values of reciprocity, community and caring. It’s safe to say Elon Musk is probably not a member of his local Timebank.
“I sometimes think of it as like a church for non-religious people,” says McGuirk. “When you move to a new town, if you’re going to church, you’ve immediately got a big network of people that you can go to for support.”
The system also allows people to contribute at their own level of expertise. “I lived in China and Japan for two years, and I’ve done a lot of te reo Māori studies, but I wouldn’t put myself out there as a Japanese language teacher or Māori language teacher for money, because I don’t feel like I’ve really got the qualifications. But if I sit down with an absolute beginner, I’m happy to share everything that I know and I’d feel more comfortable doing that for time credits than for money.”
Timebanking also makes it more acceptable to accept help, notes McGuirk. “People can end up feeling downhearted when being on the receiving end of services constantly.”
Being able to give something back solves that dilemma. Feeling you are making a contribution is also great for general wellbeing, especially for those who don’t necessarily fit into standard economic setups.
“There was a person in the Wellington Timebank with an intellectual disability who became a really important part of the team. He dropped off flyers to advertise the Timebank and contributed in other ways. You get a self-esteem boost from knowing that you’re giving not just receiving support.”
“The first exchange that I did,” says Pares Edney, “was with an American couple who had sailed into Opua. We were living in a tiny house and the only heating we had was three terracotta flowerpots inside each other. You put them over your gas ring, and they give off heat. These people didn’t have any heat in their boat and I said, ‘well, I can give you one of our pots’. That came though Timebank and I got a couple of time credits for that.”
And a bonus: “We got to meet them, so you connect up with people as well. It’s kind of a snowball effect.”
Inevitably when talking about ways of working outside the mainstream, there is the suggestion of a political component. Do Timebankers lean left? Right? Do libertarians or anarchists find it more congenial?
“Timebanking is usually presented as a politically neutral endeavour,” says McGuirk. “This is for good reason. Within the movement, Timebank organisers care very much about making Timebanking welcoming and accessible to all.”
She says a diversity of views is in line with the Timebank philosophy of being all-welcoming and building bridges between people to form stronger communities.
“I would argue, however, that Timebanking is deeply political, if we view it as a form of alternative economics, downsizing, degrowth, prefigurative politics, a series of micropolitical engagements. Timebanking invites us to think about politics differently.”
US Timebanks director Kathy Perlow doesn’t quite agree. She describes reaching out to friends who don’t share her political views in post-Trump America. She hoped they would see from the Timebank experience that the things that unite people are stronger than those that divide them. It was not to be. “There’s just some I don’t think it’s going to ever reach because they’ve just been so blindsided one way.” However, “I’m not going to stop trying.” She believes seeing how Timebanking can work, even in the current climate, might help restore some people’s faith in the established system.
The times seem right for it. “A recession or a cost of living crisis,” says McGuirk, “often fuels renewed interest in alternative ways that we can thrive and live a good life. If my capacity to earn money feels like it’s at its limit, and I’m trying as hard as I can to save money, but that’s getting more and more challenging, what else is there?”
Alana Kane of the Wellington Timebank. Photo / Supplied
Whatever their personal philosophy, most people involved in Timebanks are there because they think it is a better way.
“When I started Timebanking, I was very much like, ‘this is the revolution that we need’, and I still feel like it can be,” says Wellington Timebank coordinator Alana Kane. “I imagined a world where everyone could Timebank and that could be our currency. I need something, I could put it on the website and someone would be like: ‘I can do that.’ And I’d meet a new neighbour, we’d have a chat, and I’d build trust within my community because I start to get to know everyone around me. And at the same time, I’m sharing skills and resources. It’s a version of community that we’ve probably had in the past but we haven’t had for a while.”
For now, whether or not this movement will revolutionise how economies are structured or just be a way for a few community-focused folks to be nice to each other, only time will tell.
Timebank USA
US Timebank director Kathy Perlow.
With the death of Timebanking guru Edgar S Cahn in January 2022 the leadership mantle has passed to new board chair Kathy Perlow, who shares the role with Cahn’s widow, Chris Gray.
Perlow spoke to the Herald on Sunday from her home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where she was recovering from bronchitis and preparing for a board meeting. Her current focus – which is likely soon to be shared with counterparts around the world – is on improving the efficiency of Timebank systems to streamline processes and make interactions between groups easier and, in her words, more business-like.
Perlow agrees that the pandemic pause has led to people being more open to new ways of doing things than they were before. Other crises have also played a part.
“We heard from the Ukraine Federation: ‘During the war, what can we do? How can we mobilise our people in our country that are receiving all this help they want to give back.’ They wanted to practise Timebanking, and now that’s what they’re doing in their churches and their apartments. We hooked them up with a group from Poland that had the means to get goods to them.”
Unlike others whose direct Timebank involvement diminishes as they go up the management hierarchy, Perlow is still a dauntingly active participant.
The last time she made use of her Timebank was to source Covid masks for her community. “I reached out to everybody I knew and I gave them 20 credits for helping me. And the last thing I did was help donate to our local food pantry - we have a food box in each one of our health clinic sites. I said to people, ‘Don’t throw your unwanted food away. Give it to me. I’ll take it to the clinic.’ So I earned time for driving it over to the clinic.”
