By Laura Brown
Through the Cville TimeBank, I’ve posted requests for a service I need (trumpet lessons for my daughter) and described a service (mosaic tile work) I can offer to others. I’ve received a consultation from a talented website designer and learned how to make pickles via lacto-fermentation. (Finally! A use for all that zucchini from the garden my children don’t want to eat.) I’ve met fascinating new people outside my regular circles and have a greater sense of the richness and diversity of the community in which I live.
I love browsing the TimeBank listings. I see that time bankers in Charlottesville need transportation, bike repair, gardening help, Spanish instruction, and someone who has and knows how to use power tools. Those same folks offer services for haircuts, garden design, bread baking, house cleaning, and estate planning.
It gives me such pleasure to know that all these folks can come together without an exchange of money, or the feeling of ‘burdening’ one another with needs, but instead with the joy of connecting as the type of community we are meant to be. For me, exchanging services through the time bank is a small but significant beginning in creating a different world: one in which all people are valued and in which communities come together to respond to the needs of all.
See the fall edition of Joyful Dissent, a local zine, for the full article.
Cville TimeBank 