May 18, 2011
Why can’t common sense be funded?
Time banking seems fated to be one of those really great ideas that never quite catches fire. It hasn’t attracted the scale of financial support it needs. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is because so much of the thinking behind time banks seems based on simple common sense. The founder of time banks, Edgar Cahn, is always worth listening to. Visiting the UK recently, he spoke at a NESTA event
Dr. Edgar Cahn, creator of Time Dollars and one of the founding fathers of Time Banking visited NESTA for an afternoon seminar on May 10th 2011.
Edgar Cahn is a civil rights activist and a social innovator. He developed a radical new framework for social welfare and social justice that turns recipients of service into co-producers of change.
Believe in people
Edgar’s argument is that civil society is vastly undervalued. While markets are a great way of determining commodity prices, they are unable to put a true value on the unseen economy of mutual help and collaboration which we take for granted.
These support systems form the bedrock of our society: they raise families, form strong communities, maintain safe neighbourhoods, and care for our elderly. And yet because there is an abundance of these resources, they are devalued.
To view video of Edgar Cahn’s talk click here