Are skills the new money?
Published 01 December, 2008, 06:41
It’s a new way of doing business. Instead of paying somebody to do a job, you offer your skills in return. The idea has caught on in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, where locals have adopted a 'time banking' scheme, enabling them to preserve money.
In 'time banking' people trade skills for the services they require. It works by people doing jobs for other members of the scheme, and receiving services in return.
Time banking started in the U.S in the early 1980's and then spread all over the world. The unit of currency here is valued at an hour's worth of any person's labor and can be called different names – Time Dollar in the US and Time credit in the UK.
In Nizhny Novgorod the scheme has been successfully running for a couple of years.
PR manager of Time Bank in Nizhny Novgorod, Natalia Kim says the advantage of the scheme is that “You can offer services to other people, wait for something they can do. And you can get the services back without paying money.”
People using Time Bank in Nizhny Novgorod seem to enjoy the unusual approach.
“It’s the unselfishness of it that amazes me,” said Lyudmila Kydashkina, a participant of the scheme. “You don’t see it often these days and it is great that it's happening here.”
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