TimeBanking Begins to Trend in Silicon Valley

Written by Rachel Stober

Time becomes currency and commerce becomes connection in a form of banking finding traction in Silicon Valley.

Spend an hour walking with an elderly person, and someone else will spend an hour moving the furniture in your living room. Invest a solid amount of time in the winter knitting scarves for a father of four and rack up enough hours in your account to have your lawn mowed for the next summer.

Autumn Vandiver, a Mountain View school teacher and former Patch contributor, fills her TimeBank account using the skills she’s learned in the classroom and as a writer to later receive help in the garden, home repairs and lessons on vegan cooking.

"I found it just to be a wonderful way to connect with people and to get support with things that I couldn’t look up in the yellow pages," Vandiver said.

Members of LinkAge TimeBank Bay Area can exchange all kinds of services by posting what they need or have to offer on the site and later depositing or withdrawing the appropriate amount of Time Dollars (TD$), signifying one hour of service.

Instead of worrying about if what two users need matches what they both have to offer, time exchange works in a pay-it-forward fashion, allowing members to use the dollars they earn on any separate exchange.

TimeBanking is not a substitute of time for money, or a barter system. Instead, it is a non-commercial, non-taxable framework of exchanges that makes no attempt at rooting its "prices" in cash values.

In Time Dollars, everyone’s time is equal; one hour of service earns one TD$, whether it is spent reading a book out loud or fixing a computer.

TimeBank Bay Area is the product of LinkAges, a program from Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s David Druker Center for Health System Innovation. LinkAges takes a more social approach to medicine by improving community health with population-based solutions.

Since its launch in April, LinkAges’ TimeBank has grown to 58 members with over 130 hours exchanged, according to LinkAge’s Director of Strategic Partnerships Vandana Pant.

Pant explained that TimeBanking aims to inter-generationally connect the community to engage a growing and increasingly isolated elderly population who wants to feel like they serve a purpose.

"We’ve heard [from older recipients of care], 'I’m isolated, I'm lonely, I'm not connected to my community, I feel like a burden, I feel like I have nothing to give back," Pant said.

Elderly, handicapped or other people who might usually be limited to the receiving end of care can offer services like language skills, guitar lessons, editing, or sewing. Knitting has been one of the more popular services offered thus far.

This concept and the reciprocal care network of TimeBanking, however, is not new. LinkAges TimeBank model functions in tangent to the national organization, TimeBank U.S.A., that has formed a growing social movement around the exchange of "neighborly" services.

Similar to the mission of LinkAge’s outreach, the founder of TimeBank U.S.A. Edgar Cahn developed this model of alternative currency after he suffered a heart attack and "became keenly aware that the people we commonly perceive as passive recipients of public assistance can't enjoy feeling useless any more than the rest of us," the website states.

Since its inception in the 1980’s, the organization has spread to over 35 countries, with more than 300 TimeBanks around the world.

TimeBanking doesn’t just benefit the aging or disabled population, but targets people with skills they wouldn't quite call professional or don’t know how to market, or volunteers who wouldn’t normally ask for help themselves.

TimeBank organizers and users also believe the exchange system offers far more than practicality, helping diminish the disconnect of a high-paced, tech-centric environment and building community. Within the world of giving and receiving neighborly services, members quickly grow to have more and more neighbors.

"I’m raising my 9-year-old son in a society where it’s rather unusual to know your neighbor and socialize with them on any sort of real level and that’s something that I’ve always kind of felt was missing from our life and I wanted that," Vandiver said. "[TimeBanking] gives you that feeling of, 'Hey, these people in this area have my back,' and I want my kid to grow up feeling this sense of community."

The next Linkage TimeBank orientation session takes place on September 15th at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View.

TimeBanking members also receive discounts: 

• Red Rock Coffee offers a two-for-one deal for TimeBank members every Tuesday.
• Vaso Azzurro Ristorante offers 20 percent off dining anytime.