By Stephanie Rearick
Dane County TimeBank
The Dane County TimeBank wishes a very happy birthday to the Northside News. It’s almost like our parent’s birthday, since the Northside Planning Council (NPC) and the Northside News were instrumental in the birth of the Dane County TimeBank in 2004‒2005.
The TimeBank is a mutual credit neighbor-to-neighbor exchange system. Each person or organization who joins lists what kinds of help they can offer and what they need. Then members link up to provide stuff (mostly services) to each other, and receive an hour’s worth of credit (a number in an online account) for the exact amount of time they spent helping. They can then pass that credit on to get help from other members. Everyone’s time is valued equally and it’s a great way to connect people with the resources they need, which is often each other.
We knew we wanted the TimeBank to become countywide but also knew we needed to pick one neighborhood to start in. The Northside was a great choice. One reason was that the Northside is diverse in age, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic conditions. Another reason was that the Northside had a clear need because, at the time, it was without a grocery store. But the biggest reason was that the Northside was really organizing to make a great community, and NPC was at the heart of it.
Once the NPC staff — Jim Powell and Abha Thakkar were completely instrumental — and board signed on, we partnered to get a $6,000 Neighborhood Leadership and Capacity Building grant and got started. The Northside News played a huge role, with the fantastic Terrie Anderson writing a bimonthly column in the Northside News on timebanking that generated the initial interest that made it work.
We started with a group of about 20 awesome people who came to Lakeside Library and became our first members. We held our kickoff at Lakeview Lutheran Church Oct. 20, 2005.
That means we turn 10 this year, just as the Northside News turns 20. To me, that is very auspicious synergy and I couldn’t be more proud to share a milestone birthday year with one of our “parents.”
And speaking of parents, one of my very proudest accomplishments was helping to bring together two wonderful people, Ben Schumaker and Abha Thakkar, the current editor of the Northside News. They met when Ben was the TimeBank’s first intern. Now Abha and Ben are married with a daughter.
The Dane County TimeBank now has almost 3,000 members around Dane County, and people around the world look to us for support and guidance. We’re starting to pioneer some new ideas, like Neighbor-to-Neighbor Care Teams and Mutual Aid Networks. We hope you and other Northsiders will be part of it for a long time to come.