Edgar Cahn, Jan. 16, 2009

Edgar Cahn is a member of the Ethical Markets Advisory Board in the area of Socially Responsible Investing.

If ever there was a time when Time Banking and other local currencies make sense, it is now, to rebuild Haiti. Haiti needs to find a way to do two things:

1. Enlist every human being on the island to help – old and young, disabled and able. All can contribute. All are needed
2. To provide a way that every human being can earn the purchasing power needed to survive.
3. To find a way to tap the enormous supply of talent, caring, mutual support and love needed for a sustained effort
4. To create a way of distributing the flood of goods and supplies and material that will come to Haiti in a way that rewards cooperation
5. To counter the desperation and fear that will otherwise fuel the development of violence and looting and to provide a survival strategy that appeals to what is best in all of us as an alternative to physical force and the justification that “might makes right” when survival is at stake.

There will be distribution centers established where people can get food and clothing and supplies and building materials.

Let us suppose that paper money could be earned by signing up with volunteer crews that
• care for children
• help the elderly
• rebuilding shelters
• provide transportation
• enlist children to teach other children
• use cell phones and the internet to connect separated families and gt word out to strangers
• help with road building and reforestation
• tend local gardens
• teach skills to others so that others can learn what they need
• cook meals
• distribute clothes
• gather together to provide comfort
• celebrate each day
• share stories and songs and preserve culture and traditions

We know that foreign money pumped into an economy can do good things and bad things. Unless there is an economic system that rewards decency and caring and altruism, money can fuel corruption and exploitation and violence. We need a currency that rewards the kinds of labor that the market does not reward: caring labor, mentoring labor, civic labor, environmental labor, cultural labor, social justice labor. That is what Time Banking does.

Underlying Time Banking is a core set of values that can be put to work as operating principles.
1. Every person in Haiti has the capacity to do something that helps someone else
2. Every hour of time is precious – even if it has no “market value.”
3. Helping works best when people can pay back by helping someone else. “Pay it forward” becomes a way of transforms charity to parity and giving to reciprocity.
4. Individual help is not enough. What is needed is networks of mutual support that one can count on and call upon. That is how social capital is produced. That is how trust is built. That is how civic engagement and altruism are rewarded and reinforced as basic values

As the infrastructure is rebuilt, the need will grow. TimeBanking has the web-based software that can be used to rebuild local communities, unite families, fund projects that are essential to well-being, restore hope and a sense of meaning. Time Banking can reward the kinds of mutual help, community service, civic participation needed. It can also staff a help center and a feed-back loop that let’s those with access to resources know what is needed, what is working, what is not working.

We know that reliance on traditional money means that scarcity defines value. If scarcity is permitted to be the sole way to survive, then it will devalue all the universals that enabled our species to survive. There is no scarcity in our capacity to reach out to each other, to hold each other, to comfort each other, to come to each other’s rescue, to help each other, to be there for each other. We need a medium of exchange that rewards those basic values. Ultimately, that is why we are all here.

Time Banking in some form can help. That is why I am putting out this SOS to the Time Banking Community around the world – and to decision makers who are putting systems in place.

The economy that needs rebuilding is the Core Economy of family, neighborhood and community. That is the economy that we need to rebuild. It provides the operating system on which underlies the monetary economy. We know it works. Let’s use it.

Edgar Cahn
Founder, TimeBanks USA and Time Banking