Mid Maine TimeBank

A MESSAGE FROM TIMEBANKING FOUNDER EDGAR CAHN:

HOW PRESIDENT OBAMA CAN BEAT THE ODDS AND MAKE GOOD ON HIS COMMITMENTS

Edgar S. Cahn, CEO TimeBanks USA, Distinguished Professor of Law, UDC David A. Clarke School of Law

  In his Inaugural Address, President Obama make some commitments that seem to defy fiscal reality:

"A little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anyone else."

"We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future."

"We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit."

The problem: there are not enough funds, public, private philanthropic to pay the cost, at market prices, for all the educational services and all the health care services needed to make good on those promises.

For a quarter century, the TimeBanking community has been demonstrating how to make the impossible possible. There is vast untapped capacity in community. We have proven that:

Healthy seniors and their families can provide reliable, informal care that reduces medical costs.

Fifth graders can tutor third graders who otherwise fail to attain essential reading levels.

Teenagers can tutor elementary school children using evidence-based cross-age peer tutoring.

How could this get paid for? How can we record, recognize and reward labor from a work force that is not recognized or valued by the GDP? For decades, the TimeBank community in the United States and thirty four other countries has been learning how to do it, teaching us all that every one of us has something special to give.

The function of a medium of exchange is to put supply and demand, capacity and need together. What money does not value, TimeBanking does. TimeBanking provides a tax-exempt, local medium of exchange that uses Time as a currency. One hour helping another (regardless of mainstream market value) equal one Time Credit. TimeBanking has proven capable of harnessing vast untapped capacity that the market does not value to address vast unmet needs.

Ask the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation which just made a major award to Neighborhood Health Centers of Lehigh Valley to utilize its TimeBank program as a resource to help build a super utilizer intervention program to reduce health care costs. For ten years, home visits by Lehigh Valley TimeBank members functioning as health coaches and providing informal support have helped folks with chronic problems stay healthy and at home.

Ask Mayor Bloomberg’s Department for the Aging which has established TimeBank programs for seniors in all five boroughs to provide the kind of informal support needed to promote health and prevent unnecessary utilization of the emergency room care by elders.

Ask the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (with a 3,000 member TimeBank) that reports that 79% of TimeBank members felt that their membership gives them support they need to be able to stay in their homes and community as they get older and 100% reported they have benefited from becoming a TimeBank member.

Ask the National Education Association or do a Google search to see if Cross-Age Peer Tutoring rates the status of an evidence-based instructional and remedial strategy.

Ask the Washington State Office of Public Instruction for its authoritative manual on Cross-Age Peer Tutoring.

Ask the National Science Foundation why it granted nearly $1million dollars to Pennsylvania State University Center for Human-Computer Interaction to develop mobile apps for TimeBanking so every Smartphone user can be a time banker.

It’s time America discovered its vast hidden wealth: people not in the work force – seniors, teenagers, children, the disabled – whose energy and capacity has been tapped by TimeBanking for over a quarter century to strengthen fragile families, rebuild community, enhance health, promote trust, restore hope.

President Obama, if you want to do the impossible, it’s time to bet on each other and on our collective capacity. TimeBanking supplies a medium of exchange that translates “Created Equal” into a currency that embodies that equality. If we take it to scale, we can make good on delivering those “inalienable rights” to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness promised to every one of us by the Founding Fathers.

TimeBanks USA

5500 39th St. NW

Washington, D.C. 20015

Here is a new article by our founder, Edgar Cahn, on the growing imperative for TimeBanking in the mainstream economy:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/time-banking-an-idea-whose-time-has-come?utm_source=wkly20111118&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=mrCahn

Members, Community Weaver 1.0 has left the building! You may enter the new TimeBank by clicking Login/Join above, and please change your bookmark or favorite for that address before entering your login info. Take a look around and get yourself familiar. Don't be deterred by our apparent location in Denver--I'm fixing that ASAP.

For new members, it's all new to you! To us, it's a busy week, so please be patient while we process your applications.

This new software rocks, and will give us incredible powers of collaboration! So, if you're thinking about joining, catch the wave.

The Mid Maine TimeBank is hosting Stephanie Rearick of TimeBanks USA in Madison, Maine – Monday, October 24, 2011 

To celebrate United Nations Day, we will meet to discuss local, complimentary currencies as a unifying force for community benefit. The meeting will be held from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm at the Local 36 Union Hall, located at the corner of Old Point Road and Preble Avenue.

The event is open to TimeBank members and the public at no charge. Our guest speaker, Stephanie Rearick, is on an international tour promoting Time Banking and local applications of cooperative currencies. She has achieved notable success as Director of Dane County TimeBank, originating in Madison, Wisconsin. Dane County TimeBank boasts over 1900 active members and hundreds of organizations working together, and has spread to surrounding communities in Wisconsin. Madison, Maine welcomes her innovation and stories of resilience, sustainability, and successful Co-Production.

To learn more about how large TimeBanks make a real difference, check out http://www.danecountytimebank.org/

To learn how to make Mid Maine TimeBank a large TimeBank, come to the meeting in Madison. It starts with making the time!

Check out Stephanie Rearick at http://www.stephanierearick.com She is also an accomplished musician!

Regarding an Associated Press news story on timebanking June 3, 2010, found at:

http://www.midmetimebank.org/asspressarticle.htm

I was one of many TimeBank coordinators interviewed nationally, and I would like to add these further comments:

In response to a recent Associated Press article by Michael Rubinkam in last Sundays edition (6/6, “‘Banks’ deal in time, not cash”, I wish to let readers know that there is much more to the story of Time Banking, happening right here in Maine. In April, the founder of Time Banking, Edgar Cahn, visited the University of Maine at Augusta for a riveting economic symposium, “Making Ends Meet,” sharing his vision first sprouted in the 1980’s and now exploding, through the use of Internet technology. He calls for a partnership of currencies, the US Dollar working alongside the local “Time Dollar,” to fully express our human capacity, and teaches that competition must be balanced with collaboration. Along with the UMA community, members from five time banks in Maine attended the UMA symposium or other events during Cahn’s visit: Hour Exchange Portland, MerryMeeting Community Shares in Bath/Brunswick, Thrive Time Bank in Lewiston, Waldo Exchange (Waldo County) and Mid Maine TimeBank in Waterville (covering all of Kennebec, Somerset and Penobscot counties), who helped arrange the Maine events.

Hundreds of Mainers and many thousands of time bankers worldwide are finding that time banks offer a wide network of services and possibilities, and that Time Banking offers real solutions. Rather than turn blue waiting for the government or corporations to help us, fighting for crumbs, we have decided to help ourselves. We trade our time on an equal basis, an hour for an hour. We place a value on things that we as a society need to value – caring for and honoring children, parents and the disenfranchised, artistic endeavor, acts of kindness and making democracy accountable -- things that the cash economy does not. We have realized that money cannot buy us love, trust, or a sense of belonging or meaning to our lives. It cannot bring us community, our health, or safety. Money can disappear in the blink of an eye. Over the last forty years, our entire nation has seen a decline in social capital, a dissolving of local support and natural reciprocity. Along the way to prosperity, we lost our trust in our neighbor, our politicians, and our government. We lost our center by becoming disengaged. We have always prided ourselves on self-reliance, but it is an illusion; it has made us lose sight of community and unable to ask for help without shame.

Time, however, is up to us, and it remains constant. We can decide how we spend it. Time Banking offers us a new model of the old way of bartering, one that does not judge or classify worth, and reinvigorates volunteerism. We need each other; we need to be valued for everything that we are, and together, we have a wealth of opportunity at our fingertips. Join a time bank near you today, or start one of your own in your neighborhood. The more the merrier. As Edgar Cahn reminds us, “We have what we need if we use what we have.”

Stacey Jacobsohn

Coordinator, Mid Maine TimeBank

Dr. Edgar Cahn, the founder of timebanking, is coming to the University of Maine at Augusta on April 13, 2010! He will serve as keynote speaker for UMA's Economic Symposium, explaining the wealth of opportunity outside the market system available in every neighborhood. If you would like more information regarding this event, please e-mail: info@midmetimebank.org. Space is limited. Edgar will also be available to help steer our timebank, and we'd like to show him a warm welcome. If you would like to help plan his welcome, we would greatly appreciate it.

Edgar Cahn: Soldier in the War on Poverty and Injustice

Dr. Edgar Cahn is a civil rights lawyer and social innovator. As an activist, he has made significant impacts in areas as diverse as hunger and malnutrition, poverty, indigenous people's rights, public services, community health, public housing and social welfare.

His work began in the 1960’s with the Kennedy Administration, helping to develop Americorp VISTA as an offshoot of the PeaceCorps. He began the National Legal Services Program, drafting legislation for the “War on Poverty” during the Johnson Administration using innovative concepts of co-production with community partners. In the 70’s, he founded Antioch Law School in the District of Columbia (now the David A. Clarke Law School), fostering public interest law and a new breed of lawyers working for the common good.

Dr. Cahn is perhaps best known for his latest idea, “Time Banking,” which began in the early 80’s as an innovative alternative economy, using co-production and the theme of equality to foster self-reliance and a new way of delivering services to the needy while engaging them to help others. His book, “No More Throwaway People,” explains the concept of a core economy underlying the market economy, placing tangible value on time. The TimeBank model has been adopted by enterprises in more than 300 communities in 23 countries in North America, Europe and Asia. The smallest has fewer than 15, the largest over 8,000. Internet capabilities have grown to help timebanking evolve into a vibrant networking tool and the future is bright for this expanding program.

If you are interested in attending this event, e-mail us your contact info and we will add you to our general mailing list. Space is limited. E-mail: info@midmetimebank.org, subject: UMA Economic Symposium.

Edgar Cahn is a captivating speaker and a distinguished scholar. If you are interested in having Dr. Cahn speak for your group at your convenience while he is here in April, please contact Stacey Jacobsohn, Coordinator of the Mid Maine TimeBank:

info@midmetimebank.org

Contact Information:

Stacey Jacobsohn, Coordinator

Mid Maine TimeBank

70 Pleasant Street

Waterville, ME 04901-6672                                                                                                                                                                 

Phone: (207) 873-5844

Email: info@midmetimebank.org        

Web: http://www.midmetimebank.org/                                                                                                                                   

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TimeBank Celebrates Making a Difference!

The Mid Maine TimeBank, a project of the Kennebec Valley Organization, is holding a Fall Harvest Event to celebrate National Make a Difference Day, open to members and the public at no charge held at St Francis De Sales Parish Hall in Waterville.

Waterville, Maine – October 24, 2009 – To celebrate National Make a Difference Day, a holiday sponsored by USA Weekend to recognize volunteers in our community, the Mid Maine TimeBank of Kennebec, Somerset, and Penobscot counties is holding a

Fall Harvest Potluck from 3:00pm – 7:00pm at St. Francis De Sales Parish Hall located at 50 Elm Street in Waterville.

The event is open to members and the public at no charge, and those attending are encouraged to bring a dish and a friend. Come meet and join neighbors in celebration of timebanking, acts of kindness and the autumn season with a live performance by local musical group “Stone Quarry,” family activities and creations surrounding our bountiful harvest.

Mid Maine TimeBank

The Mid Maine TimeBank, a project of the Kennebec Valley Organization, is an organization that honors, records and rewards individual and group efforts to restore supportive communities throughout Kennebec, Somerset, and Penobscot counties. Members exchange talents, skills and resources to create a vibrant and diverse social network based on reciprocity and respect.

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