A local complementary currency, also known as a community currency, is a local currency that can be created and used in parallel with the national currency to transform and release a local community’s potential. A local complementary currency is therefore essential for furthering self-development and building community.
Did you know that many local complementary currencies are quietly being used to great effect, transforming people’s lives?Ā Don’t you think this is important, and that we deserve to hear more about this? I suggest that turning to local complementary currencies would be a good way for grassroots people to respond to the economic collapse caused by COVID lockdowns and the tough austerity measures that were imposed in many of the world’s countries.
Some good examples of local complementary currencies include:
- The Brixton Pound in London, UK, running since 2009
- The BerkShares scheme in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, running since 2007
- The Equal Dollar in Philadelphia, running since 1995
Then there are the LETS and Timebanking schemes and the many variants of these ideas, running all around the world, which are easy to set up and do not require the printing of paper money. Take a look, for example, at Heartcredits, a new non-convertible complementary currency in the UK that incentivises local transactions.
A local complementary currency can either be market-basedālike traditional currenciesāor time-basedāwhere everyone’s time is valued equally as they share their practical help and support with others in their local community. The key principle is that the circulation of the complementary currency is kept within the local community, as a local currency.
Here are 8 good reasons for you to use a local complementary currency:
- It helps to stop our wealth and energy from being drained out of the local community into remote banks and multinationals.
- It ensures that money circulates locally, going to local people and local businesses, serving and regenerating the local community.
- It builds connection, support and trust between people in the local community, enhancing community spirit – very valuable where community has been breaking down.
- It promotes resilience in the local community, protecting it against the destructive instability of the global markets and the conventional currency system.
- It reduces our ecological footprint by supporting local businesses, which will be more accountable to the community.
- It encourages us to think more about our purchases and who the currency is benefiting so that we can make better economic choices.
- It promotes creativity and resourcefulness in the local community, utilising and developing our untapped skills, enthusiasm, and potentialāeven when austerity is called for in the national and global economies.
- It is fully inclusive of the local community, enabling people who would otherwise be marginalised or trapped in poverty and unemployment to integrate and participate in the local community economy.
Thatās all for now! Let me know in the comments below if you have any experience of setting up or using a local community currency, and consider getting involved if you’re not already. The more established local currencies become, the better.
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me parece extraordinaria esta vision y posibilidad de desprenderse del sistema monetario. Como funciona realmente respecto al dinero oficial…?
A local complementary currency is necessary to keep the money circulating within the community. The national (official) currency can be kept within the local community to some degree if we start using more local community banks and local community businesses that serve the community and are run by members of the community. The key is as much to transform the community as much as the economy, and a local complementary currency can help with this.
Hello Leigh,
I am a student of International business, Brussels. My thesis is about the social impact of complementary currency on local economy. I am preparing a questionnaire for the same . Could you please share some pointers which I should cover in my questionnaire.
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Anjali
Hello Anjali – it all depends on who you are giving the questionnaire to and what feedback mechanisms they have in place. But in general, you want to look at the strength of community relations, face to face relations, trust, levels of local poverty, levels of local business success, a sense of social inclusion, resilience to global financial patterns, and how products and services not currently on the market can now be included thereby affecting social wellbeing by promoting social inclusion and championing individual talent. You can infer these from points 1-8 above. Also be aware that social factors can… Read more »
Hi, Leigh. I’ve read your responses to questions posed by other people, but I find it difficult to understand how all this “practically”, “concretely” works. The idea is great, I agree, but could you give us some link that shows a practical example ? I think it would make our ideas clearer. Thank you.
Hi Bruno. There are many practical examples. For instance https://www.letslinkuk.net/ and https://www.timebanking.org/ and of course the Totnes Pound. The Totnes Pound didn’t survive in the end due to the collapse of people’s values – which is what always sustains these systems. Convenience is a big temptation and local currencies require commitment to its community values. I would encourage you to explore this for yourself in your local area, and to set up a small local network yourself to find out how it works with some simple groundrules as I have outlined in my posts. The real point is to allow… Read more »
Hello Leigh, since reading about the banking (at the moment) structure, and obviously since 1694 in England, initially, plus reading more fully into it through notable themes by David Icke and others, it would benefit the local businesses more, as the given local currency would not have to go through a centralised central bank clearing place, and thus be not accompanied by interest (debt. Moving between counties having similar local currency, should not be a problem, and thereby likened to Victoria Grant’s talk on the banking scam, in Canada, would benefit the locals more than out of touch city bankers… Read more »
Thanks for sharing, Hamish. The key is to keep a community’s wealth in place with local currencies, while creating alternative ways of interacting economically on a larger scale that do not sap the wealth of local economies, which can be done with other currencies. Such economies require a shift of perspective and values and an agreement to build respect and collaborate for the good of the community and the greater whole of human life and the planetary ecology.