In 1998, Asociación Salud y Familia started a project to create and provide support and advice to networks for exchanging time among groups of people living or working in the same neighbourhoods/towns or cities, which was given the name TIME BANK, based on a scheme that was operating in Italy at the time.

This TIME BANK scheme has now spread all over Spain, and the users themselves manage the secretarial tasks to coordinate the exchange services. The currency used is the hour, and has the same value in all cases. All the services are priced in terms of the time taken to do them.

These time exchange groups motivate local residents to get to know each other and help each other for without any money changing hands, giving value to small tasks done on a day-to-day basis, in a natural way, which are often unappreciated by their beneficiaries: small do-it-yourself jobs around the house, sewing and/or ironing, reading to the blind, accompanying others on walks, teaching recipes, giving help with computers, etc.

The TIME BANK Project is a tool that allows newcomers to integrate, increases intergenerational exchange and reconciles personal, family and working life in conditions of sexual equality. The Time Banks network coordinated by Salud y Familia is regulated by the same rules, which the user must accept and sign when enrolling.

Report of the Project Graphical material Bulletin Gen 09

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