Holy Cross Centre Trust

The Five Principles: #4 Community

Acknowledging our interdependence

Community – acknowledging our interdependence. None of us make it alone. We come into the world nine months in debt. And thereafter, the interdependence just multiplies. We need others – and others need us. That is the wisdom behind the African proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Every species has its habitat. Ours is home,  neighbourhood, and community. Increasingly, that habitat has become unhealthy and unfriendly – for our young and for our elders. We live close to each other – but we live as strangers. It is time to reclaim that habitat. We need more than roads, bridges and utility lines. We need more than arms-length transactions between strangers. Those networks can open new opportunities, connect us to new people, and bridge to groups we might never have known. They provide resilience and open unpredictable possibilities.

In Time Banking, what may begin as an isolated exchange becomes a relationship. You are not “buying” babysitting, a ride, or home repair from the Yellow Pages or the classified ads.  Someone new has come into your life and that person is now no longer a stranger.

Each Time Bank member is a real person whose acts say: “I value being part of your life.” A web of support and empowerment has come alive. Social  scientists call these webs “social networks.” In Time Banking we know what has really happened: a new kind of extended  family has come into being.

There are parts of our life that go beyond short-term return. Family, marriage and all special relationships are built   upon commitment. Community is built upon sinking roots, building trust, creating networks, building social capital. Time Banking asks members to make such commitments.

Given the complexity of everyday life, we need new tools to rebuild the village, to restore our habitat. We go through periods of life when we have no spare time and periods when we have time on our hands. The social networks created by Time Banks enable us to borrow time, pay back time, store time away for when we need it. They cannot replace the  circle of family, friends and buddies one relies on – but they can and do expand and renew those support systems.

Time Banking technology backed by a matchmaker, who checks references and secures legally required record checks  from the police, now supplies a critical ingredient: information about who is out there whom we can trust. One cannot  create trust without memory – about who did what when. Computers provide a new kind of neighbourhood memory.

The software sends the same message as the bell in John Donne’s poem:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main….

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

That broader connectedness is at COMMUNITY is what we need the heart of Time Banking. if we are to reclaim our  habitat.