고등학교 영어Ⅰ (YBM 박준언) 연계 글

In every community, some of the most valuable work earns no money at all. People who watch a neighbor's children, cook for a sick friend, or keep a lonely older person company are seldom paid for their time. The American law professor Edgar Cahn believed that such work deserved far more honor, since it is the very work on which families and neighborhoods depend.

His own turning point came in 1980, when he suffered a severe heart attack. His doctors warned that he would be able to work for only about two hours a day, and he found it painful to think of himself as useless. In those years, a recession left many Americans idle, and many of them were being treated as useless too. Cahn began to ask how people for whom the job market had no place could still offer something that others would value. His answer was a new currency that people would earn by helping one another and spend to receive help themselves, and he called it the Time Dollar.

Members of a time bank list the skills that they can offer and the tasks with which they need help. A coordinator, to whom members send their requests, matches each request with a suitable offer and records every exchange. Each hour of help that a member gives earns one time credit, which can later pay for an hour of help from any member.

The central rule is that every hour counts the same, whatever kind of help it involves. This rule makes it possible for people of different backgrounds to trade help as equals. Imagine that a retired nurse named Gemma Ferrante spends three hours driving a neighbor to the hospital. She later spends two of her three credits on guitar lessons from a sixteen-year-old member, who uses those credits to have his bicycle repaired.

This rule reflects a core value of time banking: every person has something worth sharing. Time banks also consider it important to honor work such as strengthening families and neighborhoods, even when money cannot easily reward it. In 1995, Cahn set up an organization to help new time banks grow. Seen in this light, the hours that neighbors give one another are not small favors but the threads with which a community weaves its web of support.