Twenty years and 10,000 trades: H.A.N.D.S. will celebrate with community and cake
It’s been exactly two decades since Green Dollars were started in Golden Bay, and H.A.N.D.S. members will be celebrating 20 years of trading and community at the Mussel Inn on Sunday 11 October from 12 to 2pm.
H.A.N.D.S. has over 400 members, or about 8 per cent of Golden Bay’s population, and that membership is growing by about 40 to 60 new members a year.
Founding member Bob Gilkison, who now lives in Murchison, explained how he started H.A.N.D.S. here with Cornelius Baars, a friend he saw often at the Community Gardens. Recalls Bob: “In 1988 I took a permaculture design course with Bill Mollison on Waiheke Island. A woman traveling with Bill had started a LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) in Australia. I liked the concept and talked to Cornelius about it. From then on others became interested. There was a strong alternative community in Golden Bay so word spread quickly.”
They also used letters and articles in the Golden Bay Community News to provide information about the new scheme, which works better than a basic bartering system because it enables individuals to trade between all members.
Bob and Cornelius formed a committee with several others and agreed to work hard for six months and then withdraw to the background. They felt that the more people offering input, the stronger it would be.
“If it couldn’t survive without continued effort by a few people, then it wasn’t worth putting time into,” Bob said. But they found that people were enthusiastic, and the idea took off.
That original committee set up the basic structure — directories, transaction slips, newsletters and markets — that’s still functioning 20 years later. They created the first directory by inviting anyone keen to participate to put forward their offerings in person, by post, or in the box in the Wholemeal foyer still used today.
Transactions and record-keeping were all done with paper and pencil. The newsletter was another early step. It was important to the new system as a way of advertising what people had to offer and letting the expanding group know about new members. Market days at halls around the Bay became strong focal events so people could talk about the new system and become involved.
For the first few years the system was called simply Golden Bay Green Dollars while the committee consulted on what to call it. Hiro Ejima came up with the name H.A.N.D.S. — How About Non Dollar System, an instant winner.
The original LETS concept was designed by Michael Linton in the early 1980s on Vancouver Island, Canada, as a response to high unemployment in the community and to give value to people’s skills when Federal dollars became scarce. The main feature of trading systems like H.A.N.D.S. are that anyone in the community can earn Green Dollars, and the wealth created stays right in the community. The H.A.N.D.S system is complementary to the conventional economy and is regarded as an antidote to globalisation. Equally important, it aims to strengthen local community and social climate.
One of the roles today of local H.A.N.D.S. stalwart Joanna Piekarski as HANDy messenger is to help members make trades by circulating information about products and services members are offering and need. She does this by phone, along with frequent email updates that go to all members with internet access (about 75 per cent of members), postings at the H.A.N.D.S. noticeboard at the Wholemeal, in the H.A.N.D.S. quarterly newsletter and in the directory. Working with long-term H.A.N.D.S. activist Murray Rogers and the rest of the committee, she also organises workshops for learning new skills led by members and helps coordinate H.A.N.D.S. markets, feasts and other special events.
Since September 2005, when H.A.N.D.S. joined the community-exchange.org website, which serves over 150 LETS exchanges worldwide, there have been over 10,000 trades in Golden Bay totalling nearly 300,000 HANDS. These amounts don’t include trading with HANDS exchange vouchers, which can’t be tracked.
To join H.A.N.D.S., ring Joanna on 525 8448.
Gerard Hindmarsh
