An international conference about both the theoretical framework and practical experiences, titled “Local currencies in the 21st entury,” - http://www.localcurrency.org - was held at Bard College, NY, United States from June 25 to 27, 2004.

The E. F. Schumacher Society - http://www.schumachersociety.org/frameset_about.html - founded in 1980 to put into practice the proposals of the author of “Small is Beautiful”, saw local currencies as a good tool to promote self-sufficient local economies. This event is its first trial to bring so many people together and it was a great pleasure for us to have had such a wonderful time.

More than 300 participants came all the way to this calm venue from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden and United Kingdom, as well as from several states of the host country, to exchange their own experiences.

The conference started with Dwarko Sundrani’s speech (India) on the Gandhian perspective on economics and other social values. Then two key lectures were given, first by Margrit Kennedy (from Germany, author of “Inflation and interest-free money”, http://www.margritkennedy.de ) who explained the structural defaults of our current monetary system (exponential growth, redistributing the wealth in favor of the rich, exploitation of natural and human resources) using simple graphics and suggesting three kinds of solutions (JAK, REGIO and WIR) as practical ways to cope with our current global issues. She was followed by Dr. Bernard Lietaer (Belgian/US, author of “the Future of Money” and co-founder of the Access Foundation - http://www.accessfoundation.org - who described today’s global issues (aging, jobless growth, environmental destruction and financial crisis) and how the monetary system can affect our society by giving us examples of Ghana and Bali, underscoring the yin-yang balance in the monetary field as an essential element for our sustainable development, and providing some amusing metaphors to make this subject quite understandable.

The second day started with two lectures. The first one was given by Dr. Thomas Greco (from Arizona, United States, author of “Money: Understanding and creating Alternatives to Legal Tender” and webmaster of “Reinventing Money” http://www.reinventingmoney.com) who referred to community currencies as a way to build more healthy communities based on his academic results, saying that not-for-profit organizations and even local governments can issue their own currencies as long as they are ready to accept them back. After these keynotes some ten people went onto the stage, introducing their own experiences of local currency. The next speaker was David Boyle (of New Economic Foundation, United Kingdom - http://www.neweconomics.org - and author of “Funny Money”) who warned us of the risk of having only a single currency that fails to respect the diversity within the currency zone (such as the Euro which swept over 12 European countries, coercing them into socioeconomic changes), suggesting that we can have our own complementary currencies just like multinationals, which trade in their own currency. More than a dozen workshops were held after lunch and participants split up to attend one or two of them according to their areas of interest. In the evening Christine and Edgar Cahn (founder of Time Dollar - http://www.timedollar.org) explained to the public why Time Dollar is important for social justice, after a presentation of historic examples by Dr. Mary-Beth Raddon from Toronto, Canada.

The final day featured Richard Douthwaite (from Ireland, author of “the Ecology of Money”). He said that today’s currencies are so tightly related to oil that inflation may make a devastating impact on us once oil production stops, pointing out the importance of local production and consumption when as much as half of all energy consumption is now directed to the transport of goods promoted by globalization. After a number of workshops, Michael Shuman appeared on the stage, explaining that the best way for us to keep our communities active is to promote local production and consumption.

Several members of the Facilitation Committee for the Social Money Workshop were present at the venue and three of them led workshops: Agnieszka Komoch from Germany gave a summary on new trends for complementary currencies in Europe, especially in Germany, and inviting attendees to come to her conference in July at Bad Honnef, Germany. This was followed by another workshop given by Heloisa Primavera, from Argentina, who talked about the new paradigm of the movement in Argentina and Brazil. Jean-François Noubel, from France, led an official workshop on top of three unofficial workshops in which he explained clearly how “collective intelligence” can play a key role in creating a new complementary currency system, strengthening his international network.

The conference has been a great opportunity both to study the emerging social phenomenon of complementary currencies and to establish a good human relationship among those who work for this socioeconomic goal. We hope that our work is improved by this warm human bond that we have just created thanks to the Schumacher Society.

For more information on the main speakers: http://www.localcurrency.org/speakers.html
Read also the article of UTNE Magazine- June 2004 at:http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_2004-06/articles/11286-1.html