Our September Schumacher Conversation, “Democratizing Monetary Issue: Tools for Resilience” takes place next Thursday the 21st at 2:00 PM EDT. As with all 2023 Schumacher Conversations, registration is free.
Register here.
“Community Issued Currency: a Tool for Relocalizing Economies”
Earlier this year, Executive Director Susan Witt delivered a new presentation on local currency innovation in the Berkshires. Her remarks were given during a roundtable on Credit Design & Community Development at Harvard Law School’s Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0 Conference in June.
In it, Witt looks back at the history of local currency in the Berkshire region. And she envisions a transformative future in which place-based money, like our region’s own BerkShares, is issued through low-cost, productive loans.
Today, as the world catches up to the urgency of climate change and widening inequality, Schumacher’s question of scale returns to the fore. As Small is Beautiful taught, a shift from the prevailing trend of faceless globalization toward place-based, ecologically responsible, and human-scale production remains essential to a just and regenerative future.
However, to foster local economies, we need the economic tools appropriate in scale for the task… This then was the task we set for ourselves with the creation of BerkShares—to design a local currency system that would support local production for local consumption, encouraging what [Jane] Jacobs called import-replacement.
Witt charts decades of development that ultimately led to BerkShares, from the S.H.A.R.E. loan collateralization circle, to Deli Dollars and Farm Preserve Notes. Time and again, area residents showed their willingness to take imaginative leaps, trusting in their neighbors’ capacities and embracing the idea that currency is simply a tool to help address area needs and achieve common goals.
These iterations led in 2006 to BerkShares, our fully-fledged community currency. Backed one-to-one with US Dollars, BerkShares are today accepted by some 350 area business and have over 140,000 notes out in area circulation. Looking to the future, Witt points to the greater potential of a local currency when issued for future production:
Once fully developed, a local scrip such as BerkShares is a powerful tool for residents to shape their own economic futures unfettered by high interest rates and credit decisions made in far-away money centers. Each region could be its own new money center, and local economic problems would have local solutions.
Read the entire piece here.
Allied Organizations for September
Each month this year, we’re highlighting aligned organizations and initiatives that champion transformation in their respective fields. Those recognized in September’s theme are developing place-based monetary alternatives — empowering communities to build resilient prosperity in the face of global change — explore the full list here.
The Circle of Aunts and Uncles provides low-interest loans and social capital to under-resourced entrepreneurs in order to co-create a more equitable, sustainable, and vibrant local economy in the Philadelphia area. The group was co-founded by Judy Wicks—founder of the White Dog Cafe and other local economy initiatives.
Grassroots Economics works to improve the lives of those most vulnerable by offering tools and documents to create community inclusion currencies: regional means of exchange that supplement gaps in the national currency system. The nonprofit has implemented community currencies in over 45 locations across Kenya and assisted with two in South Africa.
RAMICS is an international research association host regular conferences and publish new research. to promote academic research on diverse monetary and exchange systems. RAMICS focuses on innovative schemes that contribute to social cohesion, democratic participation and environmental sustainability, like complementary and community currencies.
WIR is a complementary currency system in Switzerland that serves businesses in hospitality, construction, manufacturing, retail, and professional services. Founded in 1934 as a result of currency shortages and global financial instability, WIR encourages recirculation of member buying power within their regional network.
As the year unfolds, we will continue to highlight organizations working in each of our twelve 50th anniversary themes, bringing