West County Resilience Conversation:
Valley Time Trade - Our Local Time Banking System

When: February 2, 2010, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Where: Shelburne Senior Center
Shelburne Falls, MA
The next West County Resilience Conversation will be held on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at the Shelburne Senior Center, 7 Main Street, Shelburne Falls, MA from 7:00 - 9:00 PM.

The speaker will be Joanne Sunshower, who will tell us about Valley Time Trade and how we can create our own Time Bank here in the western part of Franklin County through participation in Valley Time Trade.

Valley Time Trade is a way to come together to meet practical needs, have fun, make new connections, and maintain old ones while affirming the dignity and worth of all. It is a caring and interconnected community of people who help each other by sharing their abilities, talents and experiences.

We all have needs; we all have gifts to share. When you or your organization provides a service for another member, you earn one Time Dollar (TD$) for each hour you spent providing the service, You (or your organization) can then exchange each TD$ you earn for an hour of service from someone else. Through Valley Time Trade, we can all weave community one hour at a time.

Valley Time Trade keeps track of service offers, requests, exchanges and TD$ through an online database called Community Weaver. It is a part of a movement across the country and across the world. There are over 100 Time Banks in the United States and similar systems operate in over 25 countries.

Valley Time Trade's mission is to:

*connect people and unmet needs with untapped resources
*provide economic relief through access to alternative resources
*encourage increased community interactions, wherein people help themselves and others
*foster mutual respect for all individuals in a community and bridge gaps between existing barriers
*promote equality - recognizing that all services are necessary to society and equally valuable

Valley Time Trade is one of the programs run by the Commonwealth Center for Change, located in Northampton, MA. Check them out at: www.commonwealthcenter.org.