For more information about BarterWorks, please contact us. BarterWorks: Brings people together around the common goals of skills exchange and cooperation Recognizes the gift of skill and good work Encourages people to define and describe their skills and abilities Assists individuals to work towards developing small business and income-generating ideas Provides a base of over members for businesses seeking to promote their product or service Starts from the premise of "ability" and is based on the ideas that we all have skills and strengths to share with others Creates a local currency that recognizes the important role that the informal economy plays in a strong and healthy local economy.
Contact Information. Email: barterworks theworkingcentre.
However in order for any LETS to be effective, and for trade to flourish the following aspects need to be addressed: communication; trade avenues; and, access to paid resources. Communication in any organization is vital to its success and is a central element of community networks Capra, In a LETS, it is this communication that sets the social structures allowing trade to happen, and creating social capital.
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The main avenues of communication in a LETS are through communal gatherings such as potlucks or trading circles. These gatherings are vital to the health of any LET system. Not only do they bring members together in one location to sell their goods and services, but they also facilitate face-to-face connections, which foster the creation of social capital through community connections. There also needs to be avenues for trade to occur within LET systems.
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Potlucks and trade circles play a major role in facilitating trade, however, there needs to be avenues for trade outside of these events. Other useful tools that VicLETS puts to use are electronic bulletin boards located on the organizations website, and regular newsletters. These tools provide opportunities for members to advertise their goods and services, to share information, and create awareness around the group's skills and talents.
Something that other LETS' groups have done is to highlight stories of successful trades, which helps to build trust within the system and shifts the perception that individuals can only do a job if they are part of an organized professional group.
Since VicLETS is run on a volunteer basis this can be a challenge and usually leads to volunteer burn out. Making the positions paid allows individuals to commit more time and energy to the positions Williams, The LETS is one tool that communities can use to shape their own self-reliance and re-value human activities that are essential to building sustainable communities and ecological economies Milani, ; Schraven, Imagine earning and spending community dollars at local businesses for providing valuable community services, using a LETS to reuse and recycle items while connecting with other community members, supporting local farmers while accessing fresh food, or creating space for local businesses to thrive.
Local Exchange Trading Systems LETS
These are some of the possibilities open to communities when diverse networks of open, adaptable community currencies are applied. Resilience is created through relationships, relationships we make with each other and the relationships we make with our environment. Strategic Questions. Resources and References. Annen, K. Social capital, inclusive networks, and economic performance. Benefits of Localization. Caldwell, C. Why do people join local exchange trading systems? International Journal of Community Currency Research, 4 1.
Capara, F. The hidden connections: A science for sustainable living. Bartering for a better future? Community currencies and sustainable consumption EDM Norwich, UK: Seyfang, G. Collom, E. Community Currency in the United States: The social environments in which it emerges and survives. Environment and Planning 37 9 , Online Database of Complementary Currencies Worldwide.
Dale, A. Community vitality: The role of community-level resilience, adaptation and innovation in sustainable development. At the edge: Sustainable development in the 21 st century. Sustainable community development, networks and resilience. Environments Journal 34 2 , Doppelt, B. Overcoming the seven sustainability blunders. The Systems Thinker , 14 5 , Greco, T. Money: Understanding and creating alternatives to legal tender. Glover, D. Defending communities: local exchange trading systems from an environmental perspective.
IDS Bulletin 30 3 , Helleiner, E. Think globally, transact locally: Green political economy and the local currency movement. Global Society, 14 1 , Homer-Dixon, T. The upside of down: Catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf Canada. Kennedy, M. A changing money system: The economy of ecology.
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Linton, M. The money problem. Milani, B. Designing the green economy: The postindustrial alternative to corporate globalization. Meeker-Lowery, S. Community money: The potential of local currency. In Mander, J. Newman, L. She wrote letters to the court on their behalf, and they in return gave her protection, did shopping for her and so forth. Referring to his own experience, he said he had made contact through LETS with a woman who agreed to act as their babysitter.
But he and his wife Nighat then realised they had things to offer her as she had two children aged four and a six. The LETS system had brought them into contact, but after six months they no longer needed it. But things worked better when LETS was more decentralised and those involved lived close to each other.
If you were consulting the Yellow Pages you tended to look for a local firm so you could more easily keep in touch with them and go along and complain if something went wrong. In the last two years the Council had helped by applying for and obtaining a grant from Europe of ,28, and matching that amount from its own funds. The programme would finish at the end of March, but during the intervening period they had set up three LETS systems in deprived areas - one on the Canterbury Estate which had about 30 members, one in Great Horton with about 50 members, and one in West Bowling with about 35 members.
The Council had also contributed by allowing some of their officers to spend time explaining the system to people.
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It was such a novel and radical idea that it took time for people to grasp it and be convinced it could work. Nevertheless the LETS system had blossomed in various parts of the country. In there were only seven LETS systems in the country; now there were LETS was a great equalising system.
For example when he was doing some really heavy physical work digging up a garden path with a sledgehammer he asked for 10 BRADS an hour. Someone doing babysitting might negotiate and just charge four or three. So there was some flexibility on this point. In answer to a question about the Core Group, Tariq explained that this was a voluntary committee drawn from the membership which looked after the administration of the scheme.
The Group produced a Directory and newsletter every quarter to keep people informed about what had been going on, what unusual trading had occurred, and so forth. It also issued a quarterly statement, just like a bank statement, telling every member how much they were in credit or debit.
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People sent or handed in their cheques to the central office in Girlington where all the transactions were recorded on computer. With the LETS systems on the estates there were local offices with their own computers and administration. To get a LETS system to take off you needed a certain critical mass.
But most lost interest because with only 20 people on the scheme at that point there was a very limited number of things on offer. Now that there were more than members, things had improved. It had been a Catch 22 situation. You needed the numbers to have a reasonable range of things on offer, but people were reluctant to join until the scheme was sufficiently large. Carol said there was an assumption of trust and mutual aid within the system, though it could absorb a certain amount of abuse by unscrupulous individuals.
Presumably, however, as the system grew larger the task of administration would become heavier and more volunteers would need to be drawn in to help with it. Tariq agreed. One weakness in the Bradford set-up was that in the early period they had not had a full-time, or even a part-time, worker; everything was done on a voluntary basis by the Core Group. The development of the system in the first three years relied on this voluntary work. It could be very time-consuming going out to schools or community centres, and it often proved difficult getting people to understand how the system operated and getting them to make use of it.
One woman university lecturer in social policy waited for two years before anyone called on her services. This finally happened when a 19 year-old in the Youth Forum phoned her for some help with his A-level homework. She said how disappointed she had been that it had taken all this time for anyone to ask for her help.
The young man for his part said he had been reluctant to contact her because he thought that a university lecturer was never going to come out to his home in Manningham, and help him with his homework. Andrew said it was one thing to set up LETS in towns with a large number of alternative people, such as Ithaca in up-State New York — where there was a large and thriving system - or with people who could afford to pay for the things they needed, quite another to establish it on a run-down Council estate.
If it succeeded in such areas it could empower the people living in them as they became more aware of the skills that were around and started to tap into them. He wondered what success there had been in the efforts to extend the system into poorer areas and what lessons had been learnt from the experience. Tariq said this task had indeed proved difficult. He thought it would help if LETS could operate with an actual local currency, rather than with cheques, as this would make it more accessible to all those people on the estates who did not have a bank account and were not used to handling cheques.
In Ithaca they did have their own currency, the Time Dollar, which probably contributed to the success of the scheme there. In general, people became convinced through practical involvement in LETS and experiencing its benefits. It enabled a lot to people on very low incomes to save just a few pounds here and there. They had had a lot of success in West Bowling because the Core Group organised socials every couple of months. There was one the next night where everyone would be bringing food which would be paid for half in cash and half in BRADS.