A Framework for Strengthening Community by Leveraging the Power of Organizational Networking
There are systemic structures of inequity in our society that make it more difficult for some of us to get jobs, keep our families healthy, and build safe and sustainable communities. These inequitable systemic structures create the social and economic injustice we see all around us. These problems cannot be addressed in piecemeal ways, but require a systemic approach to addressing the sources of inequity in ways that allow communities to begin to transform the system.
The DCCT is a structure for linking and leveraging community resources in ways that allow organizations and individuals to begin to collaborate more effectively to address the fundamental sources of inequity and build stronger communities.
The Detroit Collaborative Community Timebank engages three key processes for strengthening communities:
I. Embodying Social Justice in Organizational Practice./
Martin Luther King wrote that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.†If we truly need each other, then we all benefit when we build upon the assets of others through a form of networking that embodies the principles of reciprocity, equity, and social justice in practice. Timebanking allows us to move beyond principles to a form of engaged practice that builds socially just communities.
II. Asset Mapping.
Because all people and organizations have skills and talents to contribute to community-building, timebanking begins with recognition of the need to “map†or recognize these human and community assets, as the fundamental basis for community building. But unlike other forms of asset mapping, timebanks provide a structured software for asset mapping that immediately allows these “assets†to begin to communicate and cooperate with each other for the work of community building.
III. Redefining Work as Co-Production.
The “client-centered†economy of social services tends to subordinate the people it seeks to help, by treating them as “clients†or “consumers†of services, without offering any way of having their own human skills and gifts acknowledged and offered in a reciprocal relationship. Timebanking allows social service and community organizations to address this key contradiction in the social service economy by offering a way for the people they “serve†to become involved in a reciprocal process of giving and receiving that values what they can give back to the organization and community, even as their own needs are met. Instead of defining and limiting people by their needs, timebanking provides nonprofits and social service agencies a way to engage people in empowering ways as fellow citizens. The DCCT thereby strengthens organizational ability to serve the needs of people in ways that are equitable and empowering to all, and thereby builds community.
Since timebanking is based on the principle that all people, whatever their economic resources, have talents and skills for community work, timebanking provides a way of valuing the work the “market†economy fails to value. By recognizing that all people can be engaged in productive activity that builds community--based on both their needs and talents--it creates value through empowering work as a system of “co-production.†Timebanking thereby allows work to be redefined in ways that value all human beings and what they can contribute to strengthening the human economy of community.
