Insights from a Diverse Gathering

Photo by Mika Baumeister

June 2024

Our TimeBanks.Org Chats-On-A-Bench are held monthly on the third Sunday of the month from 4 pm to 5 pm Eastern US time. Here’s our standard format:

• Welcome
• TImebanking’s 5 core values – a quick rundown.
• Breakout session –  “What would you like to share with each other?”
• Whole group sharing – drawing on topics from the breakouts.

The Opening: Welcome and The Core Values 

The Core Values: 1. All people as assets; 2. See, value and count as real work what it takes to build strong homes, families, and community; 3. Reciprocity -- Valuing receiving as well as giving leads to a community rooted in trust; 4. Connection & Kindness -- We all need them!; 5. Mutual respect -- underlies everything our well-being on every front.

Chat-On-A-Bench, June 16, 2024

The large group conversation explored the following topics:

• The power of listening – and the need to explore
• Exploring the power of listening for returning citizens from prison, Christina from Tampa Bay Timebank shared about her work visiting prisons over decades, and the importance of listening to the returning citizens’ own ideas of listening because, in prison, people are bombarded with constant noise and interruption.  
• How might timebanking work in a day center for the homeless
• Helen from Sebastopol Area Time Bank shared that she is new to timebanking and looking forward to learning more….
• River from KommunityKoin.com shared that using notes instead of software for the exchanges in the context of a homeless shelter makes a lot of sense.
• A process for keeping a timebank as simple as possible with three steps and using notes
• Paul excitedly shared that he has launched his timebank to help parents at their children’s school pool their capacities so they aren’t individually scrambling to address their own children’s needs for rides, food, and after-school care. Go and check it out at framilies.com ! He hopes to make this a model for parent support groups around the country.
• Fernando from Sitges Timebank in Spain shared an international project to share information on software and how timebanking is working to help people help each other and support each other to build a community.
• Jerome from Youth Timebanking shared a project that he’s joining, organized by Jenn Laskin with high-school students who are exploring law and justice – and the possibility of including timebanking into that effort.
• Jerome also shared about the work he is doing with photovoice where young people use photos to tell a story about their community. Clink on this link to a 2-minute video on Photovoice for those interested.
• Meg from Time Bank of the Rockies is organizing a “How-To” festival in which people with skills show others how to do things. This is being done in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. The first to do this was a librarian in Kentucky.   .
• For the close, we all chose a few words of reflection on what we learned from the chat.

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of TimeBanks.Org, TimeBanks, or Timebank members.