Engaging, empowering and respecting people is key to building stronger communities. How do you engage the disillusioned communities and the socially isolated?
The locality time credits programme is about engaging the many in building stronger communities. The programme is developing a mainstream methodology and technical platform for communities across the UK.
This programme builds concentrated local 'Alliances' of public, community and private organisations, in sharing resources more effectively. The Alliances unlock the energy of citizens and organisations
Organisations build new relationships with their citizens by asking people how they would like to contribute to the community and to services and then empowering them in giving their time (giving 'Time In'). The Alliance's 'thank' people for their contributions with a credit for every hour given, with which they can access trips, events and activities provided by the Alliance (receiving 'Time Out'). The message is: 'we are not defining you as people with problems but as valued members of our community'. People are able to trade, transfer and gift credits between themselves, for community exchanges, to rebuild valuable local neighbourhood support networks. The Alliance of organisations can also share and trade spare capacity between themselves, sharing events, services and trips for thanking contributors, but also sharing service capacity to make better use of their resources (such as spaces on training courses, room hire, equipment sharing).
