Time Banking In economics, a time-based currency is an alternative currency where the unit of exchange is the person-hour. Some time-based currencies value everyone’s contributions equally: one hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. Critics charge that this would lead to fewer doctors or dentists. Early time-based currency exchanges[edit] Edgar S. Time Dollars[edit] Time Banks[edit] Time banking[edit] Time banking is a pattern of reciprocal service exchange that uses units of time as currency. Origins and philosophy[edit] According to Edgar S. As a philosophy, time banking also known as Time Trade[33] is founded upon five principles, known as Time Banking's Core Values:[34] Everyone is an assetSome work is beyond a monetary priceReciprocity in helpingSocial networks are necessaryA respect for all human beings Criticisms[edit]
Made in Sishane Why You're Not Friends With Your Neighbors | Wired Business Nextdoor and Topix, two online community networks, hope virtual fences will translate to real businesses. Photo: Jim at sonicchicken After building neighborhood social networks in more than 3,000 communities across the U.S., Nirav Tolia has learned just how many different things neighbors can accomplish. Using Nextdoor, the site built by Tolia and his team, neighbors get burglars arrested, investigate possible water poisoning, and stop the installation of parking meters. But the one thing they’re not looking to do is make friends. “You’re not friends with your neighbors,” Tolia says. “With your neighbors, everyone can get fired up about the pothole, and that’s something that your Twitter followers and your friends and your business colleagues just don’t care about… On Facebook, I’m going to be posting about my birthday.” Tolia might be on to something. This sort of targeted action happens to be an area where Facebook is weak.
Co-production James Quilligan: "Co-Production - the outcome of synergistic cooperation; productivity, creative output and social capital created through a group working under a transparent process of co-governance." Co-production = "the means by which the beneficiaries of charity, philanthropy services or public services are instrumental in the design , planning and delivery of specific services or broader social outcomes as a way of improving the service or activity and rebuilding the local community" See also the policy report with the same title, by the New Economics Foundation below. From: 'Participation' by beneficiaries of a service or a public good is not a new idea, and the forms it can take and value it adds has been debated across the world. The idea has been developed through the work of the American Civil Rights Lawyer Dr Edgar Cahn, who regards co-production as the central principle in successful professional practice. "The term isn't new.
PET Lamp In the Summer of 2011, on a visit to Colombia, I was invited to form part of an attractive project focussed on the reuse of plastic bottles PET. Hélène Le Drogou, psychologist and activist concerned with the plastic waste that contaminates the Colombian Amazon, invited me to give my point of view as an industrial designer on this problem. As part of a group of creatives involved in this project, I could see that the pollution generated by the plastic bottles that we use every day is a problem that affects us on a global level. It was because of this that I decided to develop a project that would provide answers, from a design viewpoint, to this global issue. The way we addressed this problem was to combine it with an ancient artisan resource: the textile tradition. Thus, my idea was to convert an object with a short and specific lifespan into a product enriched by the cosmogony of the local culture. Seen from a distance, for its logical complexity, it seemed like an impossible task.
The Close Web: Social Networks Are Coming Home | Wired Business San Francisco’s Potrero Hill was one of the neighborhoods that tested the new version of Nextdoor. Photo: David Spencer/Flickr In its early days, the web helped bring together scientists in Switzerland and California. Now the web is at last evolving to connect one of the trickiest groups of all: people who live right next door to one another. Today, neighborhood social network Nextdoor takes the wraps off an extensive overhaul that greatly expands the number of locals with whom its members may connect. “I’m connected to a bunch of neighbors who I’ve literally never met. Obviously that’s important for Nextdoor’s continued success (the social service doubled to 8,000 neighborhoods in the last six months and just closed a $22 million venture capital round). “We’re designed to connect to neighbors, not friends,” says Nextdoor co-founder and CEO Nirav Tolia.
New Currency Frontiers Santiago Cirugeda Santiago Cirugeda's practice is borne of the frustration that as an artist or an architect it is quite easy to transform the space of the city through obtaining permits for installations and temporary interventions, yet as a citizen it is almost impossible to take action to improve your own environment. His work therefore questions what it is to be an architect in this context and he tries to empower citizens to act in their own locality by showing how it is possible to subvert laws, regulations, and conventions. In this, his work is about the possibility for action, appropriation, occupation and use, where the citizen can act as initiator, using the guidelines and instructions set out by Cirugeda to build, display or create space. At the same time, Cirugeda's practice questions the notion of the architect as sole author-designer. His is an open-source architecture conceived as a tool kit or a user guide, distributed freely through his website Recetas Urbanas or 'Urban Prescriptions'.
Philips: Philanthropy by Design How Philips, working with nonprofits, is tackling the low-tech needs of the world's poor For decades, Nirmala Shivdas Kshirsagar prepared family meals on a chula, a wood-burning oven made from mud. The stove cost little to operate, but the 45-year-old village schoolteacher paid a price: Unruly flames frequently burned Kshirsagar's hands and feet, and smoke filled her three-room home, making breathing difficult and leaving a sooty mess on the kitchen's mud-plastered walls. It's a common problem: The U.N. estimates that smoke inhalation from indoor wood stoves kills 1.6 million people worldwide each year. So when an Indian development organization last year asked if Kshirsagar wanted to try an improved chula developed in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based electronics giant, Royal Philips Electronics (PHG), she agreed. Conventional chulas use a single length of pipe as a chimney and can only be cleaned by climbing up on the roof. Of course, such initiatives are fraught with difficulties.
Project Masiluleke | Programs | frog Project Masiluleke is the first ever attempt to tackle the HIV epidemic in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa with a mobile solution starting with a single text message to one million phones. The voicemail and text messaging campaign helped to triple average daily call volume to the National AIDS Helpline, encouraging more than 150,000 people to reach out for information. Much of last year was focused on advocacy with the South African government and building relationships with key experts in the field of infectious disease. More information on Project Masiluleke