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Today's Date
July 4, 2008
On Monday, July 21, the GLCC will be showing The Wealth of Neighbors and giving a local currency presentation at the Stevenson Community Library. The event begins at 7pm and is cosponsored by the Skamania County Chamber of Commerce.
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The next steering committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 23, in the meeting room of the Hood River Library. It begins at 7pm.
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The Summer Trade Directory is now available! Use the Trade Directory Locations link to find out where to get yours.
About Local Currency
By Scot Bergeron
In our region we have thousands of people with skills to offer their community, and yet sit unemployed or under-employed, mostly because the people who would hire them (people like me) don't have enough federal dollars to do so!
Those same people with skills to offer also need services and goods, but they too don't have enough federal dollars to purchase the services and goods they need. The key ingredient missing from the equation is money.
Federal dollars are meant to be scarce
Without interest and put more money into circulation in our community. Since RiverHOURS cannot be spent outside of our community they will never leave it, except for the occasional tourist who collects the notes, or the few that are lost. By having a complementary source of money in our community, there can be an increase in trading of goods and services.Did you know …
when you spend one hundred dollars at a big box store
such as Wal-mart, about ninety-five of those dollars are leaked
from our community?
But, if you spend the same amount in RiverHOURS, all of that money stays right here to employ your friends and neighbors over and over again.
Community currencies are working around the world, putting people back to work, invigorating communities, making connections, and creating economic stability within specific geographic regions.
Check out some of the other local currencies in America here.
Buy Local, and then Some …
Using RiverHOURS is taking the idea of buying local one step further. When you use RiverHOURS, you trade with money that will never leave the Gorge. Money that stays in the Gorge circulates over and over again instead of leaking out to distant corporations and financial institutions. If 1RH changes hands 100 times, that's an equivalent to $1000 in trade right here in our community, with zero leakage.
Expanding our Trading Capacity
Promoting the trade of local goods and services is only one function of the GLCC . We also provide no-interest loans to RiverHOURS Trade Directory advertisers. Because there are costs involved in administering the loans, there is a small fee associated with RiverHOURS loans, but no interest is ever charged.
We target larger businesses and public services to consider accepting RiverHOURS. A large business
or public service can accept RiverHOURS, but they need to have a way of spending the
RiverHOURS they collect. Explore RiverHOURS information for business owners
For example:
Every county has people who plow the roads in the winter. These people are county employees. If the county employees would accept five or ten percent of their pay in RiverHOURS, then the County could accept part of your tax payments in RiverHOURS.
As more and more goods and services climb aboard the local trade system, more and more RiverHOURS
can be used to purchase them. This could expand to local utilities, public schools, county services and more!
I am happy to receive RiverHOURS as pay so long as I can go out into my community and spend those RiverHOURS on things I need. A strong local currency can help make a geographic region economically independent. The Gorge region could have another economic system in place that's not dependent on outside imports. The trading of goods and services could go on more uninterrupted in the event of an outside calamity.
Read more at our Frequently Asked Questions page.
If you have more questions or would like to get involved with the GLCC, contact us here
© 2004-8 Gorge Local Currency Cooperative, Columbia River Gorge, USA
The Local Currency Education Project is a joint venture of
the Columbia Gorge Earth Center and Gorge Local Currency Cooperative
updated May 25, 2008
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