We are working for the MAN

We are sorry to lose our dear friend and mentor Edgar Cahn, father of modern-form timebanking.

Dr. Edgar Cahn

Distinguished legal professor and creator of timebanking. Founder and CEO of TimeBanks USA, one of the 3 largest and most successful international networks of timebanking. Former counsel and speech writer to Robert F. Kennedy. Co-founder of the Antioch School of Law (now the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia). Popular professor of changemaking among law students. Edgar has also held positions at the University of Miami School of Law, Florida International University, the London School of Economics, and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. He is a Fellow of Ashoka which is an international organization implementing system-changing solutions to human and environmental problems in 93 countries.

We are mourning the passing (Feb. 4, 2019) of our friend and mentor Bernard Lietaer, the original inspiration for the work that became Mutual Aid Networks.
Author of several books on re-creating money systems to be more sustainable and prosperous for all of humanity including Rethinking Money; How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity. Co-founder of GaiaCorp, a top performing currency fund whose profits funded investments in environmental projects. Co-designer and implementer of the European currency system (the Euro). He was a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California at Berkeley.

Bayo Akomolafe & Manish Jain
Coordinator of the International Alliance for Localization (IAL) which is a project of Local Futures, an international NGO that has been working for more than three decades to support alternatives to the global consumer culture.

Gar Alperovitz

Historian, political economist, activist, writer. Co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, a research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth. He is also Co-chair for The Next System Project. Dr. Alperovitz’s numerous articles have appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Washington Post to The Journal of Economic Issues, Foreign Policy, Diplomatic History, and other academic and popular journals. His most recent book is America Beyond Capitalism (a new edition of which appeared in 2011). He has served as a legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and as a special assistant in the Department of State. Earlier he was president of the Center for Community Economic Development, Codirector of The Cambridge Institute, and president of the Center for the Study of Public Policy.

Michel Bauwens
Michel is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. Michel was Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008, 2012). Michel Bauwens is a member of the Board of the Union of International Associations (Brussels), advisor to Ouishare (Paris) and Shareable magazine (San Francisco) and ShareLex. He is also scientific advisor to the “Association Les Rencontres du Mont-Blanc, Forum International des Dirigeants de l’Economie Sociale et Solidaire” (2013-) and advised the Advisory Board for the ‘Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity’. In the first semester of 2014, Michel Bauwens was the research director of the transition project towards the social knowledge economy, an official project in Ecuador (see floksociety.org). This project produced a first integrated Commons Transition Plan for the government of Ecuador, in order to create a ‘social knowledge economy’, with fifteen associated policy papers. The strategic framing of the plan is available at http://commonstransition.org . He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group, with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, organizing major global conferences on the commons and its economics.

John Bloom
John is the Senior Director of RSF Social Finance. RSF Social Finance seeks to revolutionize how people relate to money. It is a financial services organization that has formed a growing community of motivated, values-driven investors, donors and entrepreneurs. They envision a world in which money serves the highest intentions of the human spirit and contributes to an economy based on generosity and interconnectedness. They were originally inspired by the work of Rudolph Steiner.

Charles Eisenstein
Author, public speaker, and leading independent publisher of books on social change since 1974 including Sacred Economics. Has introduced, developed, and promoted many important alternative economic concepts including gift economy, negative-interest economics (penalties for banks and financial entities purposefully withholding financial assets from the community and world), deschooling ourselves, etc.

Vicki Robin
Vicki Robin co-founder of the New Road Map Foundation, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that promotes a human, sustainable future for our world. Co-author of Your Money or Your Life.

The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno)
Culture-jamming activists. They have produced 3 films. The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009) and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014). The Yes Men have collaborated with other groups of similar interest, including Improv Everywhere, Andrew Boyd and Steve Lambert.

Stephanie Rearick (President)
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Stephanie Rearick is founder and former Co-Director of the Dane County TimeBank (DCTB) – a 2800-member time exchange, and Creative Director of Mutual Aid Networks, a new type of networked cooperative. In addition to her work in timebanking and growing grassroots-up economic and community regeneration, Rearick is co-owner of Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse. Rearick also works as a musician.

Sybille Saint Girons (Vice President)
Based in south of France, Sybille Saint Girons is founder and former President of Heliotop a green energy production coop and of Valeureux a non profit association raising awareness and practises in cooperation dynamics. Now setting up Bien sur Terre  a net-up of complementary talents to develop and own Third-Places, physical and digital. Sybille was a software designer and engineer and is now a cooperation designer and engineer. Games creator and co-writer of 4 books, newest « L’intelligence collective, Co-créons en conscience le monde de demain ».

Anneleise Hall (Secretary)
Anneleise Hall spent 12 years in print media as a reporter and sub-editor before recognising her passion laying in helping communities to find their strengths and dreams.
Since then she has been involved as a project manager, consultant and mentor to a number of communities wanting to initiate innovative projects ranging from whole-community sustainability visions to setting up timebanks. Her background in communication has served well in helping her to understand the stories that are important to communities in her roles as a facilitator, educator and public speaker. Anneleise is a systems thinker and works in a way that listens to all the differing perspectives and weaves all the threads together to create projects that honour and empower all participants uniting them in a common vision.
“Compassion is the foundation of embracing our common humanity.”

https://www.ourplanet.org/greenplanetfm/anneleise-hall-grass-roots-nz-evolution-lead-way-in-community-resilience-social-interrelationships

Krissy Gilmore

Kristyan Rose Gilmore is the managing member of Tobe Free, LLC, a consulting firm that provides legal, training, and development services to small to mid-sized businesses looking to scale. She is also Vice President of Breakthrough Outreach Ministries, a family-owned nonprofit focused on economic and criminal justice, and is the founder of the Black Mutual Aid Network.

An attorney from Houston, Texas, Krissy (as she likes to be called) attended the University of Oklahoma (BA, Sociology, ’01), Howard University (Law ’08), and Regent University (MA, Government ’12). Her studies led her to Oxford University, and she is a World Schools debate team mentor. She offers unique insight from her experiences in ministry, law, politics, and education to help others accomplish their goals in an inclusive and supportive environment.

Krissy serves on the board of the Howard Law School Alumni Club of NY, Take Care of Harlem, and is an Apollo Theater Young Patron. An A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., fellow of the American Arbitration Association, she has a niche for alternative dispute resolution to protect common interests and relationships. Motivated by immovable faith and a passion for culture, Krissy’s scholarship focuses on optimizing self-awareness to increase productivity.

Emily Gollmer

Stephen Hinton

Stephen Hinton, BSc is a fellow of the International Association of Advanced materials, a commisioner of the People’s commission on water and drought. He is long-standing board member of the Swedish Sustainable Economy Foundation, (TSSEF.se) an independent research foundation, and former board member of the Swedish Bank JAK.se.

Stephen is known as one of the founders of the Swedish Transition movement and the eco-village project Änggärdet. He is a strong believer in alternative solutions and has developed a community finance canvas https://canvas.avbp.net/ and the 146 purchasing organisation concept https://146help.avbp.net/Via his  consulting practice, stephenhinton.org, Stephen specialises in the application of economic instruments to enable  the circular economy. Past assignments include a survey, for the Swedish Delegation for Circular Economy, of the economic instruments available to drive circularity. For the Swiss EPA, together with researchers from the university of Rome, Stephen provided in-depth background on the opportunities to use economic incentives to address nitrogen cycle management challenges. Stephen’s industrial background includes a four-year assignment as managing director in a sustainable water purification concern. Prior to that, Stephen was a program manager in the Ericsson concern

Tim Jones

Since 2019 Tim Jones has been back in Madison, WI, caring for a number of beloved elders, while learning to walk the talk of a mutual economy lifestyle. One of the primary satisfactions for Tim comes from adapting and transferring skills and lessons collected not only from years of stewardship within a collective outdoor community-space with gardens and collaborators’ community oriented efforts in Chicago, but also from the prior couple decades training and practicing ergonomics and systems-change as an industrial engineer working for human-centered improvement and risk management in decentralized industrial, trade association, regulatory & standards-making, and corporate contexts.  Tim remains clear that his and other technical enablement of the corporate/industrial complex would only further non-regenerative modes of extractive transactions, so is devotedly applying himself now to facilitate and support vision-compatible structures and activities for a variety of project efforts advancing The Madison MAN’s, HUMANs’ and Sister Projects’ advancement.

Rebecca Kemble
Rebecca Kemble, alderman for Madison Wisconsin District 18, is a freelance writer who writes for The Progressive magazine. She is also the President of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the President of CICOPA North. America, Vice-President of CICOPA Americas and serves on the Executive Committee of CICOPA worldwide. She received her Bachelors Degree from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and her Masters Degree and PhD (a.b.d.) in Anthropology and African Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Rebecca is a worker-ownerer of Union Cab Cooperative where she has worked since 2000 as a night shift taxi driver as well as a mediator. She is also a founding member, writer and editor in the newly-formed Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative.

Kate Macdonald
Kate Macdonald has had a varied career working in the NHS (mental health, research), social enterprise and in recent years founding TimeBank Hull and East Riding and stewarding the Mutual Aid Network in Hull and East Riding, UK. What all her roles have had in common is fighting for services and systems which champion people and focus on catalysing something better working alongside the people they impact on. She is an ideas person and sees the bigger picture which enables her to be ahead of the game in visioning possibilities and getting things going. From setting up early psychosis services to establishing a media company focussing on challenging stigma and stereotypes, she is passionate about unlocking potential within people and organisations. Her journey into the world of timebanking widened her perspective and focus on working with the whole community realising that together we can become the architects of our own destinies and that systems of mutual aid are the key to this.

Gorazd Norcic

I am mechanical engineer by education. Got this degree from socialist Yugoslavia/Slovenia. Have MBA degree from capitalist USA. All my life I was working – not – in mechanical engineering. In my previous life I was involved in turn around management, marketing, project management (mainly software), distributed animation production (last production was simultaneously running on three continents), etc.

Some years ago I have stepped off the civilisation’s train destined pretty much to oblivion. This decision, besides a lot of headaches, gave me also time to study and understand – hopefully – much better what is going on around me. The question was simple. Finding the answer, not so much.

The question: Is there anything that normal human being as you and me, can do to slow down the civilisation’s train or even change the direction?

The answer is quite surprising and improbable one (I must admit that) from the standpoint of a current Zeitgeist.
It is not if we can do something. It turns out that we are the only one that can.

Kurt Roskopf
Kurt Roskopf is a disability advocate. He also works on Zero Suicide and Anti Human Trafficking. It is through his hosting Ability Fest in South Milwaukee Wisconsin that he met the Milwaukee area Time Exchange. It is through their help that he was able to find out about Mutual Aid Networks. Kurt also helps the Time for All Coordinator Call Project started by TimeBanks.org.

Kathy Sipple

Delonte Wilkins

Delonte Wilkins is A native from Washington D.C. he has been organizing for years around issues such as displacement due to gentrification and also the issue of mass incarceration. He is a founder of LinkUp, an organization focused on building resilient communities through mutual aid reciprocity.

Most of the operations of HUMANs are carried by four workgroups that bring volunteers, personnel and experts together in regular online meetings. You can also see the workgroup meeting times on our HUMAN calendar.
Please feel free to join any one of the workgroups below:

Tech

As a lot of our sharing between local pilot sites happens virtually, across countries and continents, technology plays a big role in in. This workgroup develops, maintains and operates our tech infrastructure – particularely the MutualAid Platform “MAP”.

Communications

Marketing, wording, outreach, copy-editing, website and education materials… those and much more are the outputs of this workgroup.

Financial

Since our poshterity approach does not work without conventional money, this workgroup take care of funding bids, business planning, crowdfunding etc.

Social/Legal

Governance structures, by-laws, procedures, and the nuts and bolts of how HUMANs work… learning from local MAN pilot sites and sharing our collective knowledge back with them.