Community capacity building in other words.

By capacity building, we mean making a positive difference to the capacity and skills of the members of the community in question because they participate with other members of that community in activities directed towards meeting their needs in some way.

Sometimes this process is described as ’empowerment’.

In more specific terms, this is likely to involve:

equipping people with skills and competencies which they would otherwise have…
realising existing skills and developing potential…
promoting people’s increased self-confidence…
promoting people’s ability to take responsibility for identifying and meeting their own and other people’s needs…and…
in consequence encouraging people to become involved in their community and wider society in a fuller way

Such a currency would be distributed via a civic infrastructure of community groups federated by franchise or licence and operating on the same system (membership, payment and rewards), operating to the same standards of currency issuance (as described above) and working on the same revenue model that links investment in hard currency with the issuance of community currency in accordance with the rules, regulations and standards that this mutual guarantee society democratically elects to adopt, from time to time.

It’s what we’re doing in Wigan beginning on the 3rd October.