Everyone Should Be Interested in These Banks

In her small New England city, Heather Kralik is known as an “expert duster.” She will clean house for any of her neighbors and won’t charge a penny.
Elsewhere in town, a famed pianist who’s losing his eyesight offers free music lessons. Locals chop each other’s wood during the winter and tend their gardens in the spring. They share rides around town. Sometimes, strangers get together just to chat over a cup of coffee.
The goodwill in Montpelier, Vt., a quaint town where the population’s barely budged since 1910, is the result of a practice called “timebanking.” Here’s how it works: For every hour that someone spends helping others, he or she stores a credit at the time bank. Later, that credit can be redeemed for a service or donated to someone else. At its core, timebanking is both a bartering system and an alternative currency, in which everyone’s time carries the same value — whether teaching French or fixing pipes. In this section of the Green Mountain State, residents bank hours with the Onion River Exchange.
Using an online board, Montpelier residents offer their unique talents or request help. Carpenters repaired the rotting central beams in one woman’s unsafe home, a retiree who had a stroke trained himself to speak again by meeting with his neighbors and a young man arranged his entire wedding — from the invitations to the cake — through the exchange.
“There are so many reasons why people join: to save money, to meet people, to connect to the community or to support using the alternative economy,” Kralik, outreach coordinator of the Onion River Exchange, says.
Even though it encourages community service, the timebanking model differs from traditional volunteering. “It’s a network that focuses on reciprocity. If I give something, other members are giving as well. We’re not a charity,” Kralik explains.
Some of the most significant benefits can be seen in the elderly population. One 85-year-old woman in the Onion River Exchange has been racking up tons of hours now, so that when she needs help driving to a doctor’s appointment or picking up her groceries later on, she’ll have credits saved up. The time banks also give retirees a sense of purpose and companionship, which improves their physical and mental health, according to a study of a Pennsylvania time bank.
The concept of timebanking was thought up in 1980 by law professor Edgar Cahn at a time when “Ronald Reagan was withdrawing funding for social programs,” Cahn says. “I thought that if there was going to be no more of the old money to support communities, we should create a new one.” Originally called service credits, Cahn believed storing hours would incentivize volunteer work and, in the process, build stronger communities. The following year, the first time bank started in St. Louis. By 1995, a national organization, TimeBanks USA, was founded in Washington, D.C. to support development of the concept across the country. Today, there are approximately 400 registered time banks nationwide.
Montpelier’s time bank officially opened for business in April 2008, but it arose out of discussions years earlier when the town was setting ambitious goals to reach by 2050. At one of the many brainstorming groups, someone mentioned an idea they’d heard about in Portland, Maine, where residents were spending time (or “saving” it, you could say) in service to the community. Inspired by this example, the Vermonters organized the time bank, which covers a 30-mile radius of Central Vermonth around Montpelier. As of this week, 37,000 hours have been exchanged on nearly 12,400 projects.
Recently, Kralik accrued a few hours herself by helping an 80-year-old woman dust her overcrowded house. Taking a pause from the work, Kralik looked up and noticed that the elderly homeowner was beaming with happiness. “When I first heard about [time banking], I was looking forward to getting all these cool exchanges. It was more about what I was going to receive,” she recalls. “But the more I started exchanging, it was just this amazing epiphany. I was feeling really connected to a community that I had lived in for the last 30 years, connecting in a way that I’d never done before.”
Homepage photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

5 Cutting-Edge Ways That Cities Are Digging Out After Record Snowfall

Snow removal hasn’t changed much since the introduction of the horse-drawn plow in 1862. But this winter’s blizzards, which have already shattered records for the sheer amount of snow (Boston’s been deluged in 78.5 inches of powder — three times its average — and Worcester, Mass., has received a hefty 92.1 inches), are prompting smart collaborations and innovations to get the white stuff out of thoroughfares.
Make it a group effort.
Local governments plow the streets so that school buses and emergency vehicles can pass through, but some fed-up pedestrians say the policy prioritizes drivers over those who walk, bike or take public transit. Instead of griping, neighbors in Ann Arbor, Mich., banded together to operate the Snowbuddy, a 32-horsepower tractor to clear 12 miles of sidewalk each storm. Paul Tinkerhess, a 30-year resident and the lead organizer, says a unified effort makes much more sense than individuals shoveling. “It’s like taking something that’s really a linear transportation corridor, it’s one line, and dividing its maintenance responsibility into hundreds and even thousands of little links,” he says, “and assigning that responsibility to people who have a widely varying ability and even interest in maintaining that walkway.”
Solicit others to shovel.
One of the downsides of plowing the roadways is that all that snow gets piled up in huge icy banks on the curbs and corners, impeding pedestrians and upping their risk of taking a hard fall. To remove the windrows, some public transit authorities, like Rhode Island’s, have negotiated deals with advertising companies, requiring them to clear the snow around bus shelters where their signs are posted.

D.I.Y.
Chicago residents invented an ingenious way to make every ordinary citizen into a street-clearing machine: By attaching plows to almost any kind of personal vehicle. You name it, SUVs, Priuses, lawn mowers, ATVs. The Nordic Plow is a lightweight, rounded snow blade that works on almost any surface, too, so you can clear your grassy lawn or your gravel driveway. “The idea for the Nordic Auto Plows came from watching people struggle with shovels and snow blowers in cold, wintry weather,” says Richard Behan, the founder and CEO. “I believed there must be a better way.”
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Move it out of town.
Conjuring odd images of the original Tea Party protest, hard-hit Boston has considered dumping the snow into the harbor. But concerned citizens have cried foul, worried that the snow will also carry salt, litter and residue of gasoline that could pollute the bay. The strategy in Minneapolis has always been to use payloaders and dump trucks to pick up snow and consolidate it into giant piles in vacant lots. The strategy is the same in Portland, Maine, where one of the collection sites has been filled with so much snow that the mound is now 40 feet tall, just below the FAA height regulation.
Melt it.
This one’s a no-brainer. In Boston, the city is using machines that can zap up to 400 tons of snow per hour. Some of the technology is so advanced that it filters debris out of the water before releasing the cleaned H20 down a storm drain, as the Snow Dragon does by heating snow over a tank of hot water. (Other melters work like giant hair dryers, blowing out hot air.) While effective, these machines are expensive and require lots of energy to operate. But until the city implements civil engineer Rajib Mallick’s idea — building a network of pipes that could be filled with rushing hot fluid near the surface of streets, warming the pavement and melting the snow — it’s Boston’s best bet to get rid of 6+ feet of the white stuff.
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Meet the Nonagenarian Whose Generous Mission Is To Help Veterans See

World War II Army veteran Orville Swett of Port Orange, Fla., has seen a lot in his life.
The Purple Heart recipient sustained a brain injury that nearly killed him while fighting in the Battle of Anzio in Italy. Recovered, he went on to have a fulfilling career as an optician and eyeglass shop owner in Maine. In 1985, Swett retired to Florida and has been on a mission to help fellow vets see better.
Swett, now 91, inquired if the VA clinic in Daytona Beach could use a hand. “The VA had no optician when I started and I had experience. The ophthalmologist hired me immediately. I was the first volunteer in the system,” he tells the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “I do it because there was a need.”
Since then, Swett has racked up more than 38,000 hours volunteering at the VA, where he repairs and adjusts eyeglasses for vets. “I’m here for the veterans,” he says. “I work for the veterans, not the VA.”
Although Swett’s main work is to help veterans with sight-related needs, he also serves as an inspiration and source of historical information to everyone he meets — including VA interns in their 20s and fellow veterans. Dr. Dianne Kowing, who leads the ophthalmology department at the VA, says, “He gives them an understanding of their role. He’s inspiring to them. And he has a wicked Maine sense of humor.”
Swett volunteers consistently, except for three months in the summer that he spends in Maine. When he returns each fall, his coworkers are always thankful to see him. “I am committed 100 percent in helping [fellow veterans],” he said. “I was brought up that way, to help each other out.”
MORE: An 87-Year-Old World War II Veteran Made A Promise at 19 to Help Someone Every Day

One Small Town in Maine Is Trying Something Radical to Keep Its Population From Decreasing

The problem facing some Maine towns: declining enrollments and budget crunches in public schools.
As a result, some local schools have been forced to close, and the community must send their kids elsewhere for their education. The town of St. Francis, for example, was about to lose its local elementary school because only 32 kids were enrolled. Closing the facility would save the district $170,000, but result in hour-long bus trips to Fort Kent, 16 miles away.
But the residents have come up with an innovative idea that could save their elementary school: give the building to the town. Part of the structure would continue to serve as classroom space for pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students, and the other part would be converted into much-needed housing for town seniors, whose rent would contribute to running the school.
Although there is much to be worked out before the plan can go ahead, both sides involved agree that it’s a good idea. The school district superintendent Tim Doak tells the Bangor Daily News, “The more we talked about it, the more it looked like a win-win for everyone. It would help keep elderly residents in the community, it keeps the kids at school and it could provide jobs.”
Local representative John Martin has introduced legislation to allow this transfer to happen. At a recent school board meeting, he said, “There is currently nothing in the law that gives [St. Francis] the ability to do what they want to do: generate income from elderly housing [and] put them in the position to apply for grants.”
Doak is hopeful that this solution could help other struggling small-town schools in Maine. “I do think this idea for St. Francis can work,” he says. “We just need to move carefully, [and] this could be a model for the rest of the state.”
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The Smallest State’s Big Move to Build College Savings

Newborn infants in Rhode Island will leave the hospital with two things: a birth certificate and bank account.
Starting this month, the Ocean State is streamlining an existing college savings program known as CollegeBoundBaby. Since the initiative’s start in 2010, enrolled infants each receive $100 in a 529 savings plan from Rhode Island, but it’s been highly underutilized due to a unwieldy application that required parents to supply multiple pages of information and pick an investment strategy. As a result, only 400 families enrolled, according to the Providence Journal.
But now, parents can now sign up the day their child is born by simply checking a box on the birth certificate form, a small fix that the newly elected governor hopes will boost the program’s reach.
“The system now requires parents to take the initiative to open an account,” says Governor Gina Raimondo, the state’s first female governor. “With this program, before the parents leave the hospital, all they have to do is put an X in the right box and boom, the account will be set up.”
Here’s why this simplification matters: More than one-third of all Americans have no money in savings and even fewer have funds stored away for college. Many low-income youth will leave college burdened by debt, if they choose to attend at all. State governments like Connecticut and a cluster of nonprofits are aiming to change that by incentivizing families to open 529 accounts by fronting the initial seed deposit. (It’s worth noting that there can be cons to putting money in a 529 plan, so families should always look at the specifics before investing.)
The small cash incentive not only provides some economic certainty, it also forces the parents to think about long-term financial planning and sets goals to which young people can aspire. It’s proven to work. Studies show children with dedicated savings for higher education are seven times as likely to attend college. (For those not seeking a B.A., money in 529 accounts can be used to pay for trade, technical or vocational school; if not used by age 25, it reverts back to a state’s education fund.) Even beyond the benefits that come with a college degree like higher job earnings, one study found that just having a bank account aids children’s social and emotional development and correlates with optimism and decreased depression for the children’s mothers.
“From the research, we know that kids who have a college savings account, regardless of the amount, are much more likely to get an education beyond high school and graduate,” says Raimondo, a Democrat who previously served as Rhode Island’s state treasurer. “Some think it is because they have the money. The real reason is they know they are college material. It changes the way they think about themselves.”
Because the underlying principle is that families can advance themselves through smart fiscal planning, college savings accounts have bipartisan appeal to both Republicans and Democrats, Andrea Levere, president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, notes in a New York Times op-ed. The accounts have a number of models — publicly funded, donor-supported or a mix — but so far, they haven’t taken off widely: only about 200,000 young kids have the potential to receive seed money for one instead of the millions who should have access, Levere says.
Rhode Island’s streamlining of the process could improve the national model. According to Margaret Clancy, policy director at Washington University’s Center for Social Development in St. Louis, where researchers first posited college accounts in 1991, this initiative makes Rhode Island one of only three states promising universal savings accounts. Nevada starts every kindergartner with a $50 deposit, and Maine recently switched their $500 grants from opt-in to opt-out, automatically applying to every infant.
“Everybody thinks their child will grow up to be President of the United States or go to college when they’re born, but what we see is that at age 4, those goals have decreased in a lot of people’s mindsets,” Clancy tells NationSwell. Children never develop a “college-bound identity,” then financial and academic preparation fall by the wayside. Universal sign-ups, which have proven to enroll 18 times as many families as would sign up voluntarily, Clancy notes, are the most efficient way to set babies crawling in the right direction.
Raimondo admits this largely bureaucratic change is “hard and unsexy work,” but she believes “it’s going to really change people’s behavior. Small changes like this can have big, powerful impacts.”

How Farmers Are Implementing a Sharing Economy

From a young age, we’re taught to share. And now as adults, it seems like we’re really putting that lesson into practice — from ride shares to community gardens and even shared farm equipment.
That’s right, in Maine, local farmers are sharing efficient and costly equipment that most could never afford on their own — all thanks to the Shared-Use Farm Equipment Pool (SUFE).

Organized through the partnership of the Maine Farmland Trust (MTF) and the Maine Organic Farms and Gardens Association (MOFGA), the Pool was started after MTF staff member Mike Gold saw a discrepancy between the needs of farmers and the equipment available to them.

So, how does the program work? According to Modern Farmer, for an annual fee of $100, farmers have access these six tools: seedbed cultivator, two-shank sub-soiler, plastic mulch layer, strip tiller, ridge tiller and tine weeder. All of the equipment improves farming efficiency, but is so expensive that it’s unattainable for the average local farmer. For instance, the 1,200 pound plastic mulch layer retails for about $2,000.

“The equipment we choose is relatively simple, fairly easy to understand and operate,” Gold tells Modern Farmer. “They see the opportunity to use that one piece of equipment that they may only use one year or once every few years.”
After joining the Pool, farmers participate in a springtime orientation where they learn how to use all of the machinery. Following that, sharing and coordination is managed via a Google Calendar, which members check for availability.
Equipment can be rented for up to three days, and SUFE does charge members for anything that’s returned late or dirty. According to Gold, there have been very few problems, as most respect the system.
Right now, most of the members are newer vegetable farmers, but the Pool’s number of senior farmers is growing as well. And, with increasing membership, Gold hopes to add more equipment to the inventory also.
For now, though, these farmers are just taking advantage of a great opportunity and learning the value of sharing along the way.
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When These Maine Businesses Went Up for Sale, Their Employees Said ‘We’ll Buy’

In Deer Isle, Maine, more than 60 residents just became business owners, thanks to the formation of the Island Employee Cooperative.
More than a year ago, the employees of Burnt Cove Market, V & S Variety and The Galley learned that the couple who had owned the businesses for 43 years was retiring and selling them. Fearful that the change in ownership would result in loss of jobs and other negative changes, the employees took the only sensible option — they bought the businesses.
This is the largest merger of businesses in the history of cooperatives — collectively, it’s now called the Island Employee Cooperative — and it’s the largest co-op in Maine and the second largest in New England.
The process to establish this groundbreaking co-op wasn’t easy and took more than a year due to all of the legal work and the size of the businesses. Fortunately, the worker/owners had some help from Independent Retailers Shared Services Cooperative and the Cooperative Development Institute , which assisted with the organization of management, governance, legal and financial systems.
In addition, Coastal Enterprises and the Cooperative Fund of New England pitched in financially to help get the cooperative off the ground.
The Island Employee Cooperative’s feat was not an easy one, but it’s an important one. Not only did it preserve the jobs of its employee and the businesses vital to the residents of the town, it also serves as an example for other workers and cities. That’s because the events leading to its formation and its business model are easily adoptable and adaptable to other businesses across the country.
While the Island Employee Cooperative has shown that it’s possible, the road to the formation of cooperatives would be far easier if cities would invest in their development. Some cities are beginning to do so, such as New York, which just pledged $1 million to facilitate the start of worker cooperatives. Ohio has also been dappling in co-ops by giving small grants for research and technical assistance.
However, until more cities start participating, it’s up to the employees. Clearly, we should never underestimate the little guy.
MORE: These Organizations Are Empowering Female Workers

When Food Is Left Unharvested, This Organization Gleans It and Feeds the Hungry

Dotting the Maine countryside are small plots growing more fruits and vegetables than the farmers who work the land could ever pick. But despite this bountifulness, some of the state’s residents forgo buying produce because of tight budgets.
This is where Hannah Semler, the coordinator of the gleaning initiative for the nonprofit Healthy Acadia, steps in. Semler leads a team of volunteers to pick whatever is left after farmers have harvested as much as they can.
In Blue Hill, Amanda Provencher and Paul Schultz of King Hill Farm welcome her regularly to their fields. “We just don’t have time to pick everything we grow, so we’d just till it right back into the soil or feed it to the animals, but it’s still totally good food,” Schultz tells Seth Freed Wessler of NBC News. “Hannah is identifying a resource that we have that otherwise we just would not be utilized because there are not enough hours in the day.”
At King Hill Farm and 18 other Maine farms, Semler and the volunteers for Healthy Acadia glean 30,000 pounds of food a year that would otherwise go to waste. They deliver it to food pantries for the needy and to the Magic Food Bus (sponsored by Healthy Peninsula), which delivers produce to schools and housing complexes for elderly people.
According to Wessler, about 40 percent of American crops are never harvested. Meanwhile, 15 percent of Americans are food insecure (i.e. they don’t have enough healthy food).
Rick Traub, the president of Tree of Life, a Maine food pantry that distributes food that Semler collects, tells Wessler, “Poverty here is everywhere. I go to the grocery store and the person who cashes me out, I see her the next day at the pantry. The problem of hunger in the U.S. has very little to do with a scarcity of food. There’s far more food available around here than people to eat it. The problem is really about access.”
With a team of volunteers using their time and muscle to harvest good produce that otherwise would go to waste, access to nutritious food is expanding in Maine. Let’s hope this practice spreads to other states, too.
MORE: How 40 Pounds of Leftover Broccoli Sparked A Farm-Friendly Innovation
 

These Veterans Choose to Fish Instead of Cutting Bait

For centuries, people have turned to this activity to achieve tranquility, enjoy camaraderie and decrease stress. No, not yoga. We’re talking about fishing.
It’s little wonder, then, that a new generation of veterans finds the activity to be therapeutic. As a result, organizations are springing up across the country to promote fishing among our nation’s heroes.
Take A Soldier Fishing organizes group fishing expeditions and offers civilians a chance to let military members and veterans know how much they are appreciated by treating them to a day where the only stress is whether or not the fish are biting. Currently, there are chapters in Oregon, Florida, Texas and New York. Prospective volunteers, as well as veterans who’d like to fish, can sign up via an online form.
And in Maine, veteran fishing clubs are proliferating, with the new organization Back in the Maine Stream joining two others already in existence. Disabled Air Force vet Marc Bilodeu and Vietnam Marine Corps soldier Bob Pelletier founded the club with the goal of coordinating fishing expeditions among disabled service members. Their inspiration? Project Healing Waters, a national organization that plans fly fishing trips for active military personnel and veterans.
Before a fishing trip six years ago, Bilodeu told Deirdre Fleming of the Portland Press Herald, “I had been very discouraged. I couldn’t fish because of my disability. They dragged me out on a rock, put a fly rod in my hand. I was kind of miserable. It took me an hour to catch a 3-inch bass. Then it was so emotional, I cried like a baby. And I realized, I was back, and who was gonna stop me now?”
The problem was that Project Healing Waters only came to Maine once a year, so Pelletier and Bilodeu started Back in the Main Stream.
During the fishing trips, Pelletier told Fleming, “Marc and I rag on each other a lot. We can. We had one veteran who lost his hands. When he came out of the washroom I said, ‘You wash your hands?’ He goes, ‘Yup.’ But he hasn’t any. He knows where I’ve been. I know where he’s been. It’s really hard to explain to people who haven’t been in the military. They don’t understand. But I know the sacrifices he made.”
MORE: This Paralyzed Veteran Can Hunt and Fish Again, Thanks to the Generosity of His Community
 

Meet the Do-Gooders on Two Wheels That Are Helping Vets

Members of the Gary Owen Motorcycle Club in Waldo County, Maine are your typical bikers: Wearing leather jackets emblazoned with club patches and sporting tattoos that tout their affiliation, they regularly gather to tune up their bikes.
But this isn’t just a gang of motorcycle ruffians. Military veterans formed the club in 2012 with the intention of coming together around their common interest (motorcycles) to help other veterans. “We’re not a 1 percent club or an outlaw club,” the group’s treasurer, Curby Biagiotti, told Christopher Cousins of the Bangor Daily News. “Our primary goal is to help veterans, and that’s it.”
How do they assist former service members? The club started raising funds for veterans by raffling off a handmade quilt and cords of firewood. And the past few cold winters, they’ve supplied propane to the family of a veteran dying of cancer and restocked a military widow’s woodshed. But this year, the club is stepping up its fundraising efforts for its most ambitious project yet: They plan to tear down an old building on seven acres of farmland in Montville, Maine, and build a 24-bed shelter for homeless vets. They hope to get the farm up and running, too, and employ the vets in farm work. Local organic farmers have offered to teach the future residents what they know, and help them sell some of the produce they grow.
“We’re tired of seeing homeless vets. There’s no reason for our veterans to be homeless and we’ve got a lot of them,” club president Alex Allmayer-Beck told Wayne Harvey of WABI TV5. He said he believes veterans “need to be in a place where they have some semblance of stability, where people can treat them like human beings and they can get back into the work force, slowly.”
Currently, the club is raising money to get the project underway, which they anticipate will cost $750,000. They are accepting donations through the Bangor Savings Bank.
When the facility opens its doors, you can bet that motorcycles and tattoos will be welcome.
MORE:  All It Took To Get This Homeless Vet an Apartment Was A Poster