Cville TimeBank

Author: Admin

  • This is Where the Magic Happens

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    It’s official – Cville loves fixing stuff!

    It was standing room only at the spring Repair Café on March 5. With nearly 200 visitors and 75 volunteers, this fabulous fix-o-palooza was more than double the size of our first event in November. Everyone had a TON of fun while we fixed and evaluated over 340 items.

    Here’s what we did together…

    We glued, screwed and welded things like a banjo, a Buddha, a camel saddle, an Eames chair, an Olympic torch, and even the barrel tables at the IX Art Park.

    We glued, screwed and welded things like a banjo, a Buddha, a camel saddle, an Eames chair, an Olympic torch, and even the barrel tables at the IX Art Park.

    We sharpened almost 70 tools – pruners, clippers, scissors, knives, loppers and hatchets.

    We sharpened almost 70 tools – pruners, clippers, scissors, knives, loppers and hatchets.

    Learn how to sharpen your tools! Friendly fixers Janet & Charles House of WayCoolTools.com will give a sharpening workshop with Transition Cville on April 10. Click here for details.

    We sewed up 55 buttons, zippers, hems and holes in dresses, coats, sweaters, jeans, pajamas, backpacks – even a tutu.

    We sewed up 55 buttons, zippers, hems and holes in dresses, coats, sweaters, jeans, pajamas, backpacks – even a tutu. Steve Haske and Jesse Chapman from Charlottesville’s Urban Sketchers joined us to capture the event on paper! This is Steve’s sketch of our sewing section hard at work.

    We revived 40 appliances – vacuums, lamps, clocks, blenders, a hair dryer, a battery charger, a turntable – including one item with a cord that was chewed by squirrels!

    We revived 40 appliances – vacuums, lamps, clocks, blenders, a hair dryer, a battery charger, a turntable – including one item with a cord that was chewed by squirrels!

    We restored more than 45 pieces of jewelry – bracelets, earrings, necklaces, watches and glasses.

    We restored more than 45 pieces of jewelry – bracelets, earrings, necklaces, watches and glasses. Two visitors went home with handmade keepsake baby bracelets on their wrists instead of in a tangled heap.

    We fixed up bikes for kids and grown-ups – and a stroller tire, too – at the hands-on bike repair station with Charlottesville Community Bikes.

    We fixed up bikes for kids and grown-ups – and a stroller tire, too – at the hands-on bike repair station with Charlottesville Community Bikes.

    We learned how to maintain a vacuum, fix a flat bike tire, reduce household waste, rewire a lamp, replace a button, and darn a sock at mini workshops throughout the day.

    We learned how to maintain a vacuum, fix a flat bike tire, reduce household waste, rewire a lamp, replace a button, and darn a sock at mini workshops throughout the day.

    Cville Repair Café will be back soon!

    We’re raising funds to hold another free, community-wide Repair Café event in October or November. We’ll announce the date this summer.

    In the mean time, look for us at the Eco Fair on April 24 and stay tuned for other fun fixing news.

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  • Fixin’ to change the throw-away mentality

    “I’m SO happy I don’t have to take this to the dump!”

    Our very first Cville Repair Café was a sweet success. More than 80 visitors brought their stuff to be evaluated and repaired by our team of volunteer fixers on November 15, 2015. We saved vacuum after vacuum, old lamps, piles of costume jewelry, entire bags of mending, and lots more – including a couple of nearly-new appliances that had their cords chewed off by a new puppy.

    Watch the highlights in 60 seconds:

    Our check-out team reported that visitors were “glowing” as they left, and our fixers had at least as much fun as the fixees. But don’t take our word for it. Check out the news coverage:

    WAHU Fox 27 – Repair Café Fixes Old Items for Free on Sunday
    NBC 29 – Charlottesville Service Exchange Organization Hosts First Repair Café
    The Daily Progress – Repair Café brings out community, keeps items out of landfill

    And here’s the best part: we’re doing it all AGAIN in the spring! Don’t miss our next event in March 2016: Click here to join the Repair Café mailing list.

    Until then, take a look at our new Cville Repair Directory to find local repair shops for appliances, electronics, phones & computers, sewing & alterations, bikes, and much more.

  • Repair Café Coming Soon? It’s Up to You…

    One of the beautiful things about the TimeBank is how it shows us the wealth of skills  “ordinary” people have to offer. This fall, we’re working on a new project that highlights one of those skill sets: fixing stuff.

    Cville Repair Café will bring a whole crew of handy fix-it types together for a huge community repair-o-rama! Folks bring in their broken stuff and actually get to watch & learn while volunteer fixers make repairs. Perfectly good stuff gets saved from landfill oblivion, and our fixers get some well-deserved love & appreciation for their special skills.

    Toss it? No way!
    Toss it? No way!

    Our plan is to hold two huge Repair Café events between October 2015 and March 2016. And from there…. who knows? Maybe it will become a community institution!

    It’s going to take quite a bit of work to pull together the whole community and fix a TON of stuff. Our Kitchen Cabinet, in their wisdom, realized that someone will need to pour dozens of hours into managing all the bits and pieces of this project.

    So, they applied for and WON a Neighborhood Challenge matching grant from the Center for a New American Dream! New Dream will match up to $2,000 to help pay the Repair Café coordinator a modest stipend, plus cover all the other expenses of hosting these community-wide events.

    Now, here’s the thing…. a MATCHING grant means that we need to raise $$ in order to get the grant funds. So we’re running a crowdfunding campaign over at ioby.org, and we really hope you’ll pitch in $10 or $20 (or more) to help us create an amazing Repair Café!

    Our project coordinator is already hard at work with a volunteer planning team, and we’ll announce the date & location of the first Repair Café soon. We’ll be recruiting fixers, too, so keep an eye out for that request!

    Please help us earn the matching funds and put on an awesome Repair Café: donate now at www.ioby.org/project/cville-repair-cafe

    PS – Don’t wait! The Neighborhood Challenge fundraiser ends August 31. #fixallthethings

  • 2015 – A New Year, and BIG changes ahead!

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    Change #1 – No more membership fees!

    Now that we have two years of financial data to evaluate, we have a better idea of our budgeting needs. The surprise? Our expenses are less than originally expected! Therefore, we are happy to announce that we will no longer collect membership dues annually. We will still have expenses, but we have opted to rely on an annual donation drive to cover them.

    Change #2 – NEW member software!

    The Cville TimeBank is successful, in small measure, because of the Community Weaver website we have used to post service ads and to record exchanges. Created and maintained by TimeBanks USA, it helped us get off the ground, but as members have come to realize, the site is clunky and pretty awkward. Redesigns have been promised for some time but have not yet been published.

    Enter hOurworld, an online Timebank exchange site originally created by a TimeBank fan in Portland, Oregon, in 2006. Over the years, the software evolved with loving care by a collection of TimeBankers called Time and Talents. Many timebanks around the country have made the transition to hOurworld, and are thrilled with how easy it is to use, as well as the response from developers to continually improve and customize the site.

    The beauty of the software is its simplicity and intuitiveness. Listings are easy to find and exchanges are easy to record. Reports are a dream and communicating with other members is no longer cumbersome. And…. It’s free! In short, the Kitchen Cabinet representatives are completely besotted with this new software and the upcoming evolution of the Cville TimeBank!

    We are totally psyched about this change – and we bet you will be, too! Here’s a little peek into the new features we love, love, LOVE about the new Time and Talents software:favethings

    • Your personal homepage is now a cornucopia of details and direct action. Your hours? Front and center. Want to post a quick request? Boom! See all the newest posts by others? Right there!
    • Printer-friendly email statements of all your exchanges are a page away at the tap of a button.
    • Email members directly from the website and receive replies to your email. No more cumbersome contact issues when making exchange arrangements. (Can we get an AMEN?!!!!)
    • Create or join a group of members with a common interest and easily communicate activities and meetings. GROUPS! Knitters, Spanish-speakers, gardeners…. UNITE! 🙂
    • Exchange interesting work around the world with the Inter-Trade section of offers and requests in many other countries. Yup. That’s right. We said ‘around the world’!
    • At the bottom of your home page, the total number of current Cville TimeBank members, as well as the total number of hours exchanged to date, is always available.
    • Becoming a member is now as easy as clicking a button on our new homepage. Add your info and you’ll get a reply email with helpful information and an invitation to an orientation. New members still need to attend an orientation before their account is authorized.

    When?
    The big move happens January 15, 2015, when we will migrate all of our data and activity to the new platform. We’ll focus first on bringing out current members up to speed with the new site, and then our January orientations for new members we begin welcoming new members in to our spiffy new system.

    Want a sneak peek at how the new software works? click-here-to-play-video8-320

  • Where we are, and where we’re going

    Beginning January 2013, the Cville TimeBank is open to anyone in the Charlottesville area.growing

    The pilot program ran for about 6 months in 2012, and we purposefully limited membership so that we could focus on learning the software and building our organizational structure. We’ve learned a lot from our founding members who have helped us iron out the wrinkles, pitched in to help, and who have offered their input to shape the organization – and we thank them!

    We incorporated in December 2012 as Cville Time Exchange, d/b/a Cville TimeBank, and in May 2014, we received our 501(c)3 designation from the IRS. This non-profit status allows access to funding sources and tax benefits that would otherwise not be available.

    In January 2015, two BIG changes take place: new member software, and the discontinuation of member fees! Read more about these changes here.

    The next steps that we take together as an organization will be focused on growing and strengthening our TimeBank. Those of us who have been involved in the pilot program have been witness to the myriad individual and community benefits of sharing our time and our skills with timebank members. When we envision a membership of over 200, the mind reels ….. in a good way!

    Along with higher numbers, we plan to focus on the following areas:

    • Diversity: Our timebank will seek to engage members from every segment of our community
    • Sustainability: We need to create a structure that makes it possible for our timebank to endure
    • Inclusion of local businesses and organizations: business and non-profit partnerships will be created to enrich the experience for everyone.

    Visit our Kitchen Cabinet & Teams page to learn about the coordinating team behind the CTB, and email us if you’d like to be involved!