Time for the World – in a new book, other updates

Hello!

Sorry for the little lapse in writing posts, I needed some time to recover from all the activity in October and to set some other stuff in motion here. Here’s your report.

We’re dreaming big now here at Time For the World but I won’t be telling you about that now, I need time to write it up in a coherent form and share it properly. Stay tuned! We’re excited about the possibilities…

And in more immediate news: I wrote a piece that’s appearing in Slow Investing: How Your Money Can Transform the World, a book edited and introduced by John Bloom of RSF Social Finance and also featuring Woody Tasch of Slow Money, John Fullerton of the Capital Institute, and many more. I’m honored to be in their company! At the printer now, order it here.

Next Builders Workshop is Thursday December 13, 4-6pm CST, where we’ll focus on the possibilities that can open up when we connect timebanking with cooperatives. We hope and plan to start living them out here in Dane County and this will help us learn how! We welcome you to join online. We have a less-than-streamlined somewhat graceless way to do it that seems to work. Email steph@stephanierearick.com with as much advance notice as possible (at least 24 hours please) if you’d like to join from afar.

The one after that will focus on TimeBanking and Community Justice, January 17 4-6pm CST. We’re excited to host our friends from city, county and state law enforcement and human service organizations to highlight how our partnerships are working to create more community restorative justice opportunities and build our capacity to keep our own communities safe and healthy. And even more excited to show how we’re planning to expand on those and find new ways to work together to build a better justice system. We’re also working on ways to help other communities replicate and build on work we’re doing here.

Bear with me for just a couple more things, I know this is getting long…

(your little breather)

Knit a Network is a process that I’m helping to facilitate, to pull together timebankers around the world (most participants are US-based but we also have folks from S. Africa, Europe and Turkey and will hopefully be gaining a few more folks from other areas soon), in addition to people working in related areas such as mutual credit, permaculture and transition movements, to build a better sharing and support infrastructure. It’s going well, especially considering the enormity of the task. Our last call for our initial 90 day process (we took it on as a 90-Day Challenge when Edgar Cahn was suggesting the concept to individual timebanks) is Tuesday Dec. 4. By that date you’ll be able to see the work in progress (some is there now, some we’re working on until that day) at the group’s temporary Knit a Network website. Part of the group’s process is to figure out the more permanent homes and stewards for the work and how we can build systems that streamline sharing among them. Stay tuned to see how it develops, or better yet, participate!

This Saturday the Dane County TimeBank co-hosts the Madison Hours Holiday Trade Fair. Vendors will take Madison Hours and dollars in whatever combination they choose – some may take timebank hours too. And the Dane County TimeBank is hosting a swap meet where people can trade stuff, Madison Hours or checks from their timebank accounts, whatever they like and whatever feels fair. We’ve started to do this regularly lately and it’s really fun! And gives folks a chance to practice living in a different kind of economy.

and taking that deeper, we’re starting to get the Build a Better World Game out into the world. It’s finally in a more shareable form, still to be improved in the coming weeks. We’ll play in a number of settings, do some of the activities in real life, and continually improve upon the game. Or rather, players will continually improve upon the game. We’re playing here on Friday December 7 and will let you know how it goes. We’ll be taking lots of pix and video.

Look for a post in a couple weeks that’ll share that experience, point you to where you can get a better-put-together (than what I have right now, which is useable if you want it sooner) version of the game to check out yourself, and share our new ideas and plans.

Thanks for reading!
–Stephanie

ps feel free to pass this on to folks you think would be interested, and encourage them to sign up for the RSS feed if they like it so they can get an email when we post new stuff