Time Banking Applications
How Does Time Banking Help Agencies Achieve Their Mission?
The Lynn Time Bank is a free standing, independent, Time Bank with a community of members who are as diverse as the city of Lynn itself.
Members come from all walks of life and income levels. Individuals with developmental disabilities have been an integral part of the Time Bank from the outset, not as “clients” but as fully contributing members.
Mission
The Mission of the Lynn Time Bank is to build community through neighbors helping neighbors, exchanging skills and talents. The Lynn Time Bank builds community by offering a seamless service exchange system without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The Lynn Time Bank service exchange system promotes unity and common purpose and fosters the development of natural mutual supports among individuals, businesses, educational institutions, and human service agencies in the Greater Lynn area. The LTB believes that people need each other and that forming community is part of our genetic blueprint. The LTB promotes peace, stability, and healthy communities. It fights isolation, loneliness, poverty, and lack of a supportive network; factors that we believe contribute to mental illness and are at the root cause of many of modern societies’ ills. While creating value for all, the LTB opens doors to the community for many who would otherwise be isolated and only have State agencies and paid professionals to rely on for support.
Membership
The Lynn Time Bank Time Bank mirrors the diversity of Lynn, which has a thriving immigrant community of people from Spanish-speaking locations, Africa, Cambodia, Haiti, Russia, and more. Time Bank Members speak at least 5 foreign languages. Our youngest members are 11 years old, participating in a school collaboration with the Lynn Time Bank to learn about community service, and our oldest are in their 70’s. Members include stay-at-home parents, retired folks, professionals such as attorneys and bankers, life-long Lynners, and newcomers alike.
How Time Dollars are Earned and Spent
A member of the Lynn Time Bank has her gutters cleaned. She earns her Time Dollars by caring for another member’s children. Another member gets child care while she is sick from chemotherapy. She will gladly help other members of the LTB, who have become her extended family, when she is feeling better. A member who is mentally retarded is taught how to prepare simple meals. He in turn walks another member’s dog. A Cambodian parent gets a computer for her developmentally disabled son that was donated to the LTB by a local business. She earns her Time Dollars by preparing and delivering Cambodian food to a group of LTB members. Another member loads software and sets up the computer. He spends his Time Dollars having his new office painted by other LTB members. A member creates a slide show DVD for another member’s ninety four year old grandmother’s birthday party. He in turn uses his Time Dollars to get a ride to and from Logan airport for a business trip. A group of fifth graders sing happy birthday and serve refreshments to seniors at a Lynn Housing Authority birthday party for thirteen senior citizens who will be turning ninety in 2006. The fifth graders will each receive a computer to take home at the end of the school year for earning and spending twenty five Time Dollars.
Program Notable Achievements
Two hundred members at the end of the first calendar year of staffed operation, with thanks to the 70+ members recruited previously by the volunteer coordinator.
Special Projects
- Bridging the Gap with Youth and Computers: This project brings computers to fifth grade students who earn and spend 25 Time Dollars by the end of the school year.
- Lynn Family Resource Council: In this family governed project families give back with Time Dollars for flexible funding supports received from the Commonwealth for their children who have developmental disabilities.
Projects in the Making:
- Senior Outreach: The LTB has given presentations about the organization to staff and residents/seniors at local agencies and Elder housing complexes. The LTB has sponsored group activities involving intergenerational opportunities including arranging for a group of fifth graders to sing “Happy Birthday” in English and Spanish to a group of seniors turning 90, followed by the youth serving Birthday cake and lemonade to the party guests and sharing in the celebration.
The LTB has had informal discussions with the following entities with agreements to work together but no formal partnerships have been formed at this time.
- Department of Social Services Youth
- CASSP: a Department of Mental Health wrap around supports program for children and their families.
- The Food Project: a farm project that provides leadership training and agricultural and other opportunities for inner city youth.
- MRC Independent Living Center
History
The roots of the Lynn Time Bank (LTB) go back to 1998 with the establishment of the Lynn Family Forum (LFF) – a multicultural, multilingual, group of parents who have children with developmental disabilities. While the ideas germinated within this group the focus of the LTB from the very beginning was on the community as a whole that was all inclusive. In 2005, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts committed to funding the organization for three years as a pilot program. With Barbara Cox as the Director, the Time Bank continues to grow and evolve. With an active board and a thriving and growing membership, the LTB has formulated a strategic plan to take the organization into the future with the ever increasing support from partners that include businesses, educational institutions, human service agencies and its own members.
The Youth Advocate Program (YAP) serves youth who face compulsory residential placement or who have already experienced such placement.
Many have emotional disorders. YAP trains community members, who become advocates and mentors for the youth for a specified number of hours each week. YAP is piloting Co-Production to deepen the way in which advocates and staff become a pathway for youth to actively support the mission and vision of YAP – thereby learning that they have inside them skills and competencies that their community needs, and using those skills and competencies to further develop and grow.
Mission
YAP’s mission is to provide youth who are, have been or may be subject to compulsory care with the opportunity to develop, contribute and be valued as assets so that communities have safe, proven and economical alternatives to institutional placement.
Vision
The aim of the four pilot YAP Co-Production projects is to encourage mutual aid between members of the child and family team, other families in YAP, community members and organizations. Youth active in YAP are also asked as part of the program to assist the local YAP site and give back to their own communities. Creating new social supports, building social capital and enhancing individual assets and capabilities are all goals of the pilot projects. The lessons learned from the pilot sites will be taken to YAP programs in communities throughout the US. The vision of these pilots is powerfully expressed by these two poems:
2 Way Street
This is our 2 way street
Where families and community meet
Where unfamiliar faces begin to speak
And the strong help the weak
To help one another is the gift of giving
A beautiful gift to help the living
Live out their dreams of family and friends
Showing unconditional love from beginning to end
What’s better to know, a community that has your back
And the foundations of this community is your alliance with YAP
YAP appreciates the family efforts, so we give thanks
For the countless time deposited into our time bank
- Dennis Shabazz Lewis, YAP Advocate, NY
Time Dollar Pitch
Time banking and Co-Production is an exciting new program that YAP has to offer.
Do you have a talent, skill, or interest that would benefit others?
By sharing your talents and time,
others will reciprocate by providing a need or service for you.
So what’s it all about?
It’s sharing and getting it…
”Right back at ya”!
Membership
YAP co-production/Time Banking centers on the youth and their extended families, program alumni, staff and other community organizations.
How Time Dollars are Earned and Spent
At two of the four pilot YAP sites, regular Time Banks are being created whose members exchange services. Members include YAP youth and their families, the child and family team members, alumni, and YAP staff. Additionally, specific collaborative relationships are being set up through contracts between the local YAP program and participating youth and families.
The other two sites are structuring restorative community service group projects for participating youth who have been mandated to pay back their communities for harm and damages that they are responsible for. Youth are involved in projects such as restoring homes as part of a Habitat for Humanity project or “adopting a community organization” in dire need of staff support. Youth who graduate “phase one” of the project will be asked to serve as youth leaders in “phase-two”, mentoring new kids referred to YAP. Parents will also be asked to contribute a minimum of 3 hours of service in support of their youth, YAP, and their community.
Program Notable Achievements
A notable feature of the YAP projects is the use of explicit co-production contracts between the staff and youth that spell out the commitments being made by each party. These contracts bind the staff and the youth into mutual commitments in what becomes a genuine partnering relationship.
In addition, a contribution based assessment and planning process has now been integrated the operation of child and family teams. Soon after referral, youth and family members begin transacting between one another, community members and with YAP itself, and in that way they begin building empowerment, reducing hopelessness and reducing dependency on program services.
Short History
In 2005, the YAP board of directors decided to integrate the principles of Co-Production into the organization’s mission statement as an explicit method of empowering youth and improving communities. YAP is now piloting four project sites to utilize youth and family strengths, assets and skills through Co- Production and Time Banking.
Partners in Care is designed to create community by linking frail elderly and disabled adults with neighbors who volunteer their time to help with occasional tasks and errands.
The goal of these services is to help seniors and disabled adults remain independent in their own homes.
Vision
Partners in Care aims to create a network that will help all Maryland residents. The vision is to network Partners In Care sites so that neighbors and families can help each other long distance.
Membership
Partners in Care currently has an approximate enrollment of 2000 members, with these members supporting each other in small virtual communities throughout the county.
How Time Dollars are Earned and Spent
Partners In Care are "informal caregivers" who earn Time Dollars by providing non-medical services to community residents who need extra help. Members may choose to provide services, receive services, or both. Many volunteers initially choose to be providers of services. Partners In Care has chosen a long-range view to reciprocity that encourages volunteers to bank at least some of the hours they have earned as an assurance that help will be there for them if unexpected future needs arise.
In 2004:
- 4,505 individual tasks were completed to help older adults remain independent in their homes
- 16,429 hours of services were given to residents of the community
- groups throughout the community contributed 1,519 hours of time
Program Notable Achievements
In 2005, Partners In Care received a “Best Practices” citation in a Federal Report for its Ride Sharing program to help the elderly.
In 2000, Partners In Care was recognized as one of the top 8 best intergenerational “service learning” projects in the State of Maryland.
Special Projects
- Thrift Store: Partners In Care members run an upscale community thrift store that has come to act as a hub for the community and provides significant resources to support the Time Bank. The Boutique has almost 80 members of its own, creating its own time and talent bank. These members help out at the thrift store in 3-hour shifts. In 2005, members exchanged 7500 hours.
- Transportation: In 2004, members of Partners In Care drove over 67,456 miles for seniors who need transportation. The program focuses particularly on those seniors needing extra help getting from their homes into a car, or trips at the edge of the normal work day, and trips that may not be accommodated by family members or the Department of Aging van system. The Time Bank’s Ride Partners Program is the result of collaboration between Partners In Care, the Annapolis Department of Transportation, and Americorps. Medical appointments, laboratory testing, mammograms, and pharmacy pickup top the list of transportation requests.
- Handyman Project: Handymen volunteers take care of small tasks such as leaking faucets, window repair, and handrail installations on a daily basis. High demand for this service led Partners in Care to seek out partnerships with several contractors in the county, whose staff volunteered to address more critical home repairs. During 2004, handymen filled 199 such requests.
Group Projects
Partners in Care collaborates with other organizations to take on projects such as a leaf-raking day in the fall, building hand railings, repairing water damage to a kitchen and porch, and house-painting for elderly who lack the financial capacity to pay for these tasks and are unable to do them for themselves. Partners include the West County Rotary, local public and private high schools, and groups working with the local United Way.
Brief History
Partners is based in Severna Park, Maryland, and has focused on serving the elderly. It was founded in 1987 by Maureen Cavaiola, Barbara Huston, and Sandy Jackson. All three Co-Founders continue to be involved in leadership roles in the program.
Lynn Time Bank