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Story: A Service Coordinator for the Dawn Project called the Time Bank and asked if I would speak to one of her moms. The Dawn Project works with families who have kids with a mental health diagnosis and who are at risk of residential treatment. Her child is now stable and the case is moving toward closure. This mom wanted to use Time Dollars to build an addition onto her already existing home.

I am used to strange requests but this seemed "off the wall" and I wasn't eager to talk with her. She hadn't even joined yet, and having just put a room addition on to my own home, I knew she wasn't talking just a few Time Dollars but huge amounts of time from lots of different people. I called her the next Monday morning and began to give her my "song and dance" about the Time Bank and then she gave me hers!

She had already built an addition onto a house, and knew someone to do the electrical and the plumbing. Problem was she had carpel tunnel and wasn't able to lift those huge pieces of drywall up so she could use her nail gun to attach them to the ceiling! She was willing to work.

When I asked what she could do, I was met with home repairs, sewing and patching useable clothing with cartoon characters so they don't look patched, and birthday parties. She loved to give birthday parties for children. I told her about our Mentoring Children of Promise program which works with incarcerated parents. The parents could earn the time credits in prison but we needed someone who was able to pull a party together for a kid so their parents could gift them with a birthday party.

Could she do that? Could she ever! She sent a picture of a cake she'd recently made and an email saying that her mom had been incarcerated and her dad murdered when she was 8 and doing this for these children would be a gift and honor for her.

I talked with the ACES members and they will help her with her house. Kids will have parties. The lady will get her home addition. She also is currently working with a woman carpenter, an ACES member, who needed some mentoring on building a business. She is earning her hours. One phone call, and I didn't want to make it...will I ever learn?

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