The Open Collaboration Blog talks about the practice of gift circles. Their purpose is to “create a self-organizing, decentralized network that re-localizes communities, fosters resilience, builds social capital, and creates economic self-sufficiency by activating latent resources through sharing needs and gifts in gift Circles.”
The germinal structure is the community gift circle: a group of people that meets regularly to meet one others’ economic needs without money or barter. The basic structure is that each person takes a turn describing something she needs and others can chime in with offers. The second time around, folks describe something they would like to give: unused materials, labor, time, expertise, etc. Some example of things given – babysitting, massage, organizing, mechanical help. There is a third round for the expression of gratitude. The circle also encourages facilitators to play around with different format structures each meeting. A circle works well with a size range from 5 to 50, and over a year can have 50-500 people pass through it.
Where could these emerge? Who in any community is in the position to start them up? How could they start to replace dependencies on consumer practices and institutions that maintain widening disparities in assets and abundance?
