[Peace-discuss] LATimes: SF neighborhood breaks ground with "complementary currency" debit card

[David Green]

This is where my wife and I hang out on our trips to SF to visit children/grandchildren. It's a neighborhood that's quite diverse, including economically, and remarkably unpenetrated by major corporate branding. That said, I doubt that such experiments will prove to be the basis for necessary financial reform.
 
DG


>________________________________
> From: Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
>To: Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> 
>Sent: Sunday, February 5, 2012 8:36 PM
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] LATimes: SF neighborhood breaks ground with "complementary currency" debit card
>  
>
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bernal-bucks1-20120206,0,6838671.story 
>
>
>
>
>
>Los Angeles TIMES/Feb. 6, 2012
>
>Unified by the coin of their realm
>
>Insular Bernal Heights — 'this weird little borderline utopia,' as one
>resident calls it — has updated 'complementary currency' in the form
>of a debit card.
>
>By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times
>
>February 6, 2012
>
>Reporting from San Francisco
>
>Coiled around a wind-swept hill near this city's lively Mission
>District, Bernal Heights takes an almost cult-like pride in being
>insular.
>
>With a butcher, grocer, bookstore and bakery, the neighborhood
>provides the basics. When you add to that some unique establishments —
>like an organic baby food outlet and a knife-sharpening venture
>offering classes in Japanese whetstone techniques — many residents say
>they rarely feel the urge to leave.
>
>"It's this weird little borderline utopia," said Ken Shelf, 42, who
>runs a combination movie-rental and succulent store here. His home,
>business, favorite shops and kids' school are all within a five-block
>radius.
>
>Now, Bernal Heights is taking its experiment in localism one step
>further, adopting what is believed to be the country's first
>"complementary currency" in the form of a debit card.
>
>Designed by two neighborhood loyalists versed in technology and
>banking, the Bernal Bucks card allows residents to pay for their
>purchases while earning credits every time they swipe it at any of the
>two dozen area businesses that have signed on since June.
>
>Accrued as frequent-flier miles are, the bucks can be printed as
>coupons and used toward future purchases. Cardholders also can donate
>their accrued "wealth" to neighborhood nonprofits.
>
>"The convenience of being able to use it anywhere and having your
>money increase in value because it's giving back to the community,
>those are really important things for Bernal residents to plug into,"
>said Rachel Ebora, executive director of the Bernal Heights
>Neighborhood Center, which has started to pull in program-related
>donations.
>
>::
>
>The idea of complementary currencies — which enhance but don't replace
>an official mode of exchange — is not new.
>
>Massachusetts' Berkshire region has Berkshares, colorful bills bought
>with dollars at a slight discount. In California, Davis Dollars
>(adorned with a bicycle) have circulated for a few years. And two
>Marin County communities recently began minting $3 tokens at a
>discount that are handed out as change. They can be spent at
>participating merchants or pocketed as souvenirs.
>
>Other currencies that encourage local trade or barter have sprung up
>in Sweden, Japan, Kenya, Venezuela and Britain, among other countries.
>
>The downside of most of the programs, advocates concede, is that
>consumers have to carry two kinds of cash. And the most-engaged
>merchants often get saddled with registers full of funny money.
>
>So Bernal residents Guillaume Lebleu and Arno Hesse worked out an
>electronic solution.
>
>They met at an "unconference" on banking innovation in 2009. Both had
>been pondering how communities could bolster their economic health in
>the face of the national downturn. After hosting a forum to toss
>around ideas, they began distributing $5 bills to merchants marked
>with Bernal Bucks stickers.
>
>Residents who reused the bills locally, in what Lebleu called
>"probably the neighborhoodiest neighborhood in San Francisco," got a
>token of appreciation: a crisp apple or an upgrade to a larger coffee.
>
>The stickers raised awareness, Hesse said, but their potential was
>limited. Fortunately for Bernal, he and Lebleu had the background to
>take it to a higher level.
>
>The soft-spoken Lebleu, 36, had developed financial software and long
>pondered the ways technology was "changing money itself and, with it,
>our communities and society."
>
>The 50-year-old-Hess was a former Union Bank executive who had been
>involved in the Slow Money movement, which urges resident investment
>in the local food supply — with often unconventional returns. (His own
>investment in a Vacaville organic farm earns him a steady supply of
>eggs.)
>
>Bernal Bucks is the pilot program of a company Hesse and Lebleu formed
>last year to promote community rewards networks.
>
>They are funding the effort out of their own pockets. Without going
>into details, Hess said that he and Lebleu "expect to make a living —
>not a killing — as the program gets adopted by more communities."
>
>Branded with a cheerful image of Bernal's iconic hill, their Visa
>debit card is issued by the local Community Trust Credit Union and
>aims to make patronizing neighborhood stores simpler: Residents can
>earn rewards or make charitable donations without having to keep track
>of stickers on their bills or carry a passel of
>buy-nine-and-get-the-10th-free punch cards.
>
>Hess and Lebleu track the purchase patterns of Bernal Bucks
>cardholders — who number in the hundreds — online and check in
>face-to-face with merchants.
>
>One recent day, they stopped in at Succulence, Shelf's video and
>succulent store.
>
>After movie rentals began to decline, Shelf tacked a plant business
>onto the back of the shop two years ago. In addition to succulents,
>the store sells ceramic and glass planters handcrafted by local
>artists and offers classes on building terrariums and vertical
>gardens.
>
>An early backer of Bernal Bucks, Shelf said the "economic implosion of
>2008" prompted him to spend more at local businesses and urge others
>to do the same. "It's kind of cool," he said, "knowing that you're
>keeping people's families going."
>
>::
>
>Josh Donald, owner of Bernal Cutlery, is another believer.
>
>"I love the idea of a local currency," said Donald, who like others
>here moved his accounts from a corporate bank to the credit union
>while signing up for the card.
>
>But Donald is still waiting for a customer to present him with a
>Bernal Bucks coupon. That may be because shoppers are saving up their
>credits.
>
>Among them is Brigitte Phipps, a young mother who runs her husband's
>chiropractic office. She has accrued $100 in Bernal Bucks — her 5%
>return on $2,000 in purchases from the Good Life Grocery — but has yet
>to decide where to spend them or whether to give them away.
>
>"I think it's pretty awesome," she said. "I don't leave the hill."
>
>As for the nonprofit donations, Hess and Lebleu said they are building slowly.
>
>Some cardholders give a fixed percentage of their bucks to the
>elementary school's PTA, while others have chosen the Bernal Heights
>Neighborhood Center, which offers programs for low-income youth and
>seniors.
>
>As six elderly women in black top hats tap-danced in the community
>room recently, Ebora, the executive director, showed off her brand-new
>Bernal Bucks card. (According to credit union manager Carlos Brenes,
>20 or so users sign up every month.)
>
>Last month, she said, the center accrued $50 in Bernal Bucks
>donations. The amount may seem small, but Ebora said it would pay for
>a month of hot lunches for one senior.
>
>"Any little bit helps, especially with the decline in public funding," she said.
>
>The program taps into a growing desire to transact business on a more
>intimate level.
>
>"People are recognizing that dollars are basically scarce right now,"
>said Janelle Orsi of Oakland's Sustainable Economies Law Center. But
>even when you don't have the real dollars, she said, you still have
>something of value.
>
>Orsi said she often is approached by clients seeking to pay for legal
>services in unconventional ways. In exchange for recent advice to a
>food cooperative south of San Francisco, for example, Orsi was offered
>lessons in "bird language."
>
>"Money is so weird," she said. "It only has value if people are
>willing to accept it."
>
>lee.romney at latimes.com
>
>Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
>
> -- 
>Robert Naiman
>Policy Director
>Just Foreign Policy
>www.justforeignpolicy.org
>naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>
> 
>
>_______________________________________________
>Peace-discuss mailing list
>Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20120206/f6c43c7d/attachment-0001.html>