Stephanie Rearick and Leander Bindewald: If it wasn’t crystal clear just weeks ago, it is now: The economy as it stands is currently positioned in direct opposition to social and environmental objectives. For the sake of the wellbeing of our communities, our children, and our planet, it is imperative we change the voracious path of our consumption culture and consider how we might create opportunities for people to find meaningful work.

At the Mutual Aid Network, we have developed a new type of networked cooperative — one that, among other things, lets people find talented collaborators for personal, neighborhood-wide, or even city-wide projects. Here’s how we make it happen:

The first step is to bring people together around a common goal of any size and scope to form an individual “Mutual Aid Network.” The common goal can be anything — a group of friends aiming to redesign each person’s work life, a watershed restoration initiative, a city-wide energy efficiency and renewables program, a decentralized cooperatively-owned manufacturing initiative, a travel and culture exchange, or a meal program to ensure that everyone in a neighborhood has enough to eat. While each network is entirely autonomous, the underlying principles it follows are from drawn from commons governance and cooperative models.

To achieve the common goal, members pool and steward resources by combining any of the following tools — all tried and true in the patches of solidarity economy, big and small, over the course of generations:

• Shared resources or the commons: Participate in tool libraries, makerspaces, shared laundry facilities, and so forth.

• Timebanking and swapping: Exchange time credits — for example, an hour worth for a service, be it babysitting, cooking, cleaning, rides, light carpentry, gardening, art/music/language lessons, in exchange for a service. Contribute frequent flyer miles, meals, plots of land, buildings, equipment all to be acknowledged in community credits that are fair, transparent, and always mutually beneficial.

• Price-based mutual credit currencies, for business and highly professionalized service: Buy a $1,000 piece of equipment from a participating business for 1,000 points of interest-free credit, to be paid back by selling $1,000 worth of goods and services to the network. Taxed according to applicable laws.

• Savings pools and community investment: Contribute to a common pool of money to be allocated to collectively agreed causes or members with one-off financial needs, be they for a home, health care, or even burial expenses. Examples of this abound around the world and include the Mutual Aid Societies in the U.S., the original Building Societies in the U.K.

And then there is the “Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks,” formerly referred to as the Main Mutual Aid Network, which is one big global cooperative owned by all individual Mutual Aid Network sites. The members connect, share resources and best practices, and support new Mutual Aid Network sites all around the world by using the same approach and principles applied in the local sites.

Of course we don’t expect everyone to be solely working in the Mutual Aid Network context, but expect that more opportunities will build over time. Our strategy is to start with a number of pilot sites with different focus areas, strengths, and limitations, and have each one commit to supporting one another and help foster new sites. Eight pilot sites have signed up already, and at least eight more are in the works.

The economy of the 21st century is something we’ve been prototyping throughout human history. Now we can connect those ideas and practices that have proven to be sustainable over time and use technologies to connect, exchange, share, and learn collaboratively and effectively. Networks of networks can quickly connect to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to build the skills needed to make whole, happy communities. We are already doing it, across the world, independently and increasingly interdependently. Please join us. What you can do:

• Join an online orientation

• Join the Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks (formerly Main Mutual Aid Network) global co-op (U.S. based, global membership)

• Join the Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks work groups

• Explore creating a pilot site

• Participate in our Summit in Madison, Wisconsin, from Feb. 17-20

• Sign up for our e-mail list

All of those opportunities, plus more learning resources, can be found at: www.mutualaidnetwork.org

Here are some of our pilot projects:

Madison, Wisconsin

Allied Community Co-op is the first Mutual Aid Network pilot site. It’s where some of the organization’s fundamental ideas were born. Located in a food desert with little infrastructure (no school, grocery store, library, or neighborhood center), the Allied Co-op is working to bring a food buying club and a cooperatively-owned grocery store to the neighborhood.

The Social Justice Center, a multi-stakeholder nonprofit building in Madison’s affluent East Side, is a convening partner in exploring Madison’s second Mutual Aid Network pilot, which will be an inter-city partnership connecting Allied Co-op and many other local stakeholders in a network of resource-sharing and exchange initiative designed to create more equitable distribution of existing resources across the city.

Lansing, Michigan

The Mid-Michigan bioregion is home to a number of both for-profit and nonprofit cooperative enterprises, including the Mid-Michigan Time Bank, the Lansing Maker’s Network, and the Mid-Michigan Renewable Energy Cooperative. By leveraging time, tools, and talents, these groups will form the backbone of the Mid-Michigan Mutual Aid Network to help the region find new ways to build a sustainable new economy.

“Mutual Aid Networks provide a platform for communities to build from the ground up through identifying strengths and resources that are present globally which can be put into action through local location-specific projects,” says Marshall Clabueaux, a renewable energy activist and social entrepreneur.

Providence, Rhode Island

In the Providence Bay Area, the Fertile Underground Natural Cooperative is working to get a catering truck on the road. This truck will take food from farms and supermarkets and offer the raw, natural ingredients for free, while selling the prepared food. The goal of this project is to reach places that have limited access to fresh food and provide cooking demonstrations using seasonal produce.

Waterville, Kansas

Wellness Weaver, a timebank, has collaborated with partners around the US to connect people who want to create a FUNctional Health and Wellness Workers Cooperative — a wellness-oriented Mutual Aid Network.

“The value of the Mutual Aid Network is to bring the wisdom and expertise of those that have used time banking formally as a way to help develop and support the best functioning Wellness Oriented Mutual Aid Network,” says Helen Stucky Weaver, retired nurse and founder of Wellness Weavers.

St. Louis, Missouri

Solidarity Economy St. Louis is currently working to incubate African-American cooperative businesses, co-host a local conference around the theme of “Health, Wealth, and Disrupting Capitalism,” develop a time bank youth court program, engage in community organizing efforts to create a neighborhood food hub in the food desert of North St. Louis, and promote community development of vacant land.

“Being part of the Mutual Aid Network allows us to connect to and co-create a global movement of people who are working to build just and sustainable economies,” says Julia Ho, founder of Solidarity Economy St. Louis. “The only way for us to truly achieve mutual aid in our own communities is by extending mutual aid to others.”

Bergnek, South Africa

Bergnek Community Projects is a community development initiative that was started to empower and uplift women and youth through sustainable business ventures. The program provides access to food, clean water, and reproductive health care for women and girls in school. The long-term aim of the group is to build a community health care center.

Hull, United Kingdom

This Mutual Aid Network aims to create a chain reaction that goes back into communities. It meshes a thriving timebank with 600 members and the Hull Coin initiative, the City of Culture’s 2017 nomination, which is currently mobilizing 4,000 volunteers.

“When I started the TimeBank back in 2010, I saw it as the solution to everything,” says Kate Macdonald. “I realized in time that it is ‘one’ solution and that to have a viable parallel economy, we need different options which have strengths to use in different circumstances. When I heard Stephanie speak about Mutual Aid Networks a couple of years ago, I realized this had been what I had been looking for. What is often missed is a mechanism to join things up.”

Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania

The Mutual Aid Network of the Lehigh Valley addresses the social determinants of health of communities’ most vulnerable members, including formerly incarcerated people, juveniles aging out of the foster care system, homeless populations, individuals recovering from addiction, and newly settled refugees. This project address tackles these issues by tackling social isolation, one of the key factors that contributes to poor life and health outcomes.

These eight initiatives demonstrate that building a solidarity economy that serves every human being on the planet is possible.

A previous version of this article appeared in the July 2016 issue of STIR magazine

Header photo courtesy of the Mutual Aid Network.

The post The Mutual Aid Network Takes a Ground-Up Approach to Create a Collaborative Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Participants can view and comment on each other’s assignments in the forum, and can interact as they wish, with tutors commenting on assignments in the forum. Lessons Two and Four are followed by one hour webinars with the tutors, which occur on Saturday mornings at 10am. The first iteration begins February 2015, and the next will be in quarter three of 2015.

The following text is reposted from the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability:

A free online course at Masters-level will enable you to understand the past, present and future role of money in society. The 5th cohort starts 20th August 2017 and lasts 8 weeks (one lesson every two weeks). Enrol here.

The course is therefore highly interdisciplinary, drawing upon anthropology, sociology, history and heterodox economics. It is designed by Professor Jem Bendell PhD (IFLAS) and Matthew Slater BD (Community Forge), with additional tutoring by Leander Bindewald MA (IFLAS).

Typically 50 to 100 people complete the full 4 lessons, and many then continue to interact in the Alumni Forum. Over 20 have progressed to attend the full certificate course in London.

The next offering of the MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) starts online on August 20th 2017 and runs for over 2 months, with four lessons:

Lesson One: An introduction to money: functions, forms, and fallacies

Lesson Two: The history of money and its discontents

Lesson Three: The problems with mainstream monetary systems

Lesson Four: Alternatives

Each lesson begins on a Sunday, consisting of a audio-narrated slides of less than two hours (which you can listen to when you want within the following days), followed by two hours of personal reading and one hour to prepare a written assignment of around 500 words, which must be submitted by the following week.

Participants can view and comment on each other’s assignments in the forum, and can interact as they wish, with tutors commenting on assignments in the forum.

Lessons Two and Four are followed by one hour webinars with the tutors, which occur on Saturday mornings at 10am (UK time). You need access to a decent broadband connection but do not need any special software to engage in the course. If without a powerpoint viewer, participants can view lessons on youtube. Participants cannot start the MOOC late.

Sign up at http://mooc1.communityforge.net The next offering of the MOOC after August will be in February 2018.

At the end of this MOOC you will be able to:

• Critically assess views on the form and function of money and currency by drawing from monetary theories
• Explain theories on how social, economic and environmental problems arise from mainstream monetary systems
• Explain alternative forms of money and currency and the theories on how they can support better social, economic and environmental outcomes.

The full schedule follows below. On the MOOC you will be joined by participants on the Certificateof Achievement in Sustainable Exchange, which is a credit-bearing module offered by the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Cumbria. Four days of classes in person at the Docklands Campus in London begin in April 2017, featuring Professor Bendell, Leander Bindewald and a range of guest lecturers. These classes explore the wider issues of currency innovation and the collaborative economy. There is a fee for the certificate, not the MOOC. You must have started the MOOC in order to enrol.

The Tutors 

Matthew Slater is a software engineer who specialises in open source software for community currencies. Co-founder of Community Forge, which produces software for and hosts over 100 local currencies, he is a regular commentator on grassroots initiatives for community control of currency and credit.

Leander Bindewald is the coordinator of the EU funded project Complementary Currencies in Action, and a regular commentator on currency innovation.

Photo by Sole Treadmill

The post Money and Society MOOC – starts again August 20th 2017! appeared first on P2P Foundation.