Value for People blog launched

Well here we go into the Blogosphere!

A bit about Value for People, why it was set up, what I hope it will achieve and a bit about work in progress.

You'll find the aims of Value for People (I'll call it V4P for short) on the website. Basically, after 14 years of experimenting with community currencies (CCs) as an administrator, coordinator, chair of a core group, promoter, lecturer, trainer and writer, I want to share the fruits of my experiences, in order to improve the practice of CCs.

I have run a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) for 10 years in mid-Wales (UK) and then co-managed the Wales Institute for Community Currencies from 2003 to 2007, where we pioneered innovative applications of the time banking mechanism in the field of community development in the depressed ex-mining areas.

There is an awful lot of theorising around CCs and their role in the universe. What we need to know now is: what works? and how can we improve their performance?

So, as a consultancy and training practice, we offer tools to help people to develop more effective systems.

In particular, the Co-Production Workshop has been developed to help public service professionals look critically at their practice and find ways of bringing reciprocity into public services.

Secondly, the Currency Design Workshop has been developed to aid designers of new CCs or managers of existing CCS to think carefully about all the design issues surrounding CCs.

Finally, linked to the CD Workshop, I am writing a handbook for CC design, to teach people about the key issues and take them through a step-by-step design process. Once the first draft is ready (in about a month), I will be looking for 'guinea pigs' willing to trial the manual for a few months and give me feedback. Please get in touch if you would be interested in taking part in this.

John Rogers