In 1991, Paul Glover showed friends a self-photocopied banknote design in Ithaca, New York, and said, "This will become money." He first found 90 residents willing to exchange goods and services before the paper became a circulating time currency known as Ithaca HOURS. By the mid-1990s, researchers estimated that as many as 2,000 people in an area of roughly 100,000 residents may have used HOURS in transactions.
The significance of this history does not lie in the novelty of an alternative banknote. Behind the paper were a directory of businesses, people who matched exchanges, rules governing issuance and credit, and a community willing to recognise the value of neighbours' time and skills.
Lingxi Insight believes that the core of a community economy is residents' participation in deciding what is worth exchanging, which needs should be seen first, and how resources are formed and circulated locally.
Before the Banknote Came the Community
Ithaca HOURS did not emerge from one successful flash of inspiration. In the late 1980s, the area had experimented with a Local Exchange Trading System that recorded transactions in a central ledger. It attracted no more than 60 participants. Ten months later, the community organisation holding the accounts closed and the scheme ended. Glover retained the idea of local exchange but moved towards a paper medium that was easier to pass from person to person. In 1991, he drew inspiration from a small shop that had raised expansion funds by pre-selling "Deli Dollars", then expanded a single merchant's advance-purchase voucher into a currency accepted across the community.
Circulation still required people to maintain it. The study records Glover walking through the community every day to recruit and retain merchants and to help shopkeepers who had accumulated too many HOURS find services they could buy. His newspaper doubled as a directory of goods and services. A corporation and board formed in 1998 moved part of the operation from founder-led work towards institutional governance.
This process breaks the statement "the community has resources" into four conditions: people are willing to contribute, their contributions are recognised, exchanges can take place, and rules are maintained collectively. Without any one of them, a community currency remains a design rather than a working system.
From Community Economy to Co-production
Social and Solidarity Economy places cooperatives, mutual-aid organisations and community practices within a broader framework. Elsen emphasises cooperation, democratic governance and social purpose. Mandrysz focuses further on embeddedness: whether a social-economy initiative can develop depends on its understanding of local needs, its use of existing social capital, and its ability to build relationships among residents, public institutions, social organisations and local businesses.
Mandrysz's account of co-production also changes how service roles are understood. Residents bring more than a set of needs. They may also bring time, practical skills, caring experience, language ability, neighbourhood relationships and judgement about local problems. An organisation's role therefore includes creating rules and safe conditions through which these capabilities can influence services and resource allocation.
Kwai Tsing's Community Mutual-Aid Bank makes this idea concrete. A historical booklet from the Hong Kong Council of Social Service records that residents could earn community points by teaching, volunteering, joining activities or groups, or consigning their own goods for sale. They could exchange those points for interest classes, food, daily necessities or school supplies. Residents brought their time and capabilities into the exchange, while the organisation defined eligible contributions, recorded points and maintained matching. This is one practical form of co-production within a community economy.
Embeddedness is an ongoing task of governance: whose capabilities are recognised, who still finds it difficult to participate, and whether exchange rules are fair all require repeated review.
Local Cases: From Wan Chai Time Coupons to Six-District Exchange
The Wan Chai practice more closely resembles Ithaca because both turned labour time directly into a medium of exchange. St. James' Settlement promoted time coupons in old Wan Chai. Residents who provided one hour of goods or services could earn time credits and exchange them for second-hand clothing, appliances, organic vegetables, tutoring, haircuts or home repairs. A 2017 report interviewed Wan Chai resident Luk Yin-yung, who had volunteered with the organisation for 13 years, working at the centre around five days a week and using accumulated credits for clothing and daily necessities. Her experience shows how time coupons entered everyday life and why a resident might continue participating over many years.
The same report shows that community currencies were not confined to one district. In 2017, six organisations converted currencies used in Tin Shui Wai, Wan Chai, Sheung Shui, Kwun Tong, Kwai Tsing and other participating areas into a common unit called "Palm" for the pilot "District Link". One hour of labour equalled six Palms, while each district retained different ways to contribute: residents made sauces and grew produce in Tin Shui Wai, sewing teams operated in Sheung Shui and Wan Chai, and residents staffed centres in Kwun Tong and Kwai Tsing. Exchange items included cooking oil, groceries, handmade sauces and care products. In Kwai Tsing's Community Mutual-Aid Bank, 60 community points could be exchanged for six Palms. The common currency and cross-district bazaars expanded the range of goods and services available beyond a single district.
A more recent Kwai Tsing example came from another programme. In 2024, Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service introduced the Community Support Programme funded by the Community Investment and Inclusion Fund. Since September 2023, the programme had connected stakeholders in Kwai Tsing. Residents could convert volunteer time into time-bank points and exchange them at a Lai Yiu community event for food, handmade goods, health checks or service information; residents could also run stalls and earn points on site.
Putting the Ithaca and Hong Kong materials together reveals similar infrastructure: list what people can contribute, define how exchange works, connect people in need with available resources, and have an organisation maintain trust. The systems and contexts differ, while the exchange medium itself remains thin; the substantial work lies in relationships, matching and governance.
Participation Has Costs and Power Relations
Community participation is often described as though everyone has something to offer. In practice, some people have no discretionary time, some caring and emotional labour is difficult to quantify, and some people need support before they are in a position to contribute. If a points system recognises only work that is easy to record, it may reproduce existing inequality within the community.
Mutual aid must not become a justification for reducing public services or turning professional work into unpaid labour. Organisations remain responsible for safety requirements, service accountability, personal data and professional judgement. The boundary of co-production is that it increases residents' influence over needs, methods and resources; it must not quietly transfer institutional responsibility back to those with the fewest resources.
The history of Ithaca HOURS also shows that maintaining a network requires continual recruitment, matching, communication and governance. If a scheme depends excessively on a small number of committed individuals, or fails to address withdrawal, disputes and resource imbalances, even an inventive exchange medium will not run by itself.
NGOs Can Start with One Small Cycle
From One Activity to Shared Governance
A small resource cycle works only when needs, contributions, rules, matching, exchange and review remain connected.
An organisation does not need to invent a currency first. A smaller starting point is to choose one real service and map a resource cycle with residents. Who currently defines needs? What capabilities are residents already providing but not recording? Which contributions can be exchanged safely? Who is responsible for matching, handling imbalances and reviewing the rules?
A small pilot can retain only four kinds of record: needs raised, contributions available, successful or unsuccessful matches, and participants' suggested changes to the rules. These records should improve the system rather than become a master scorecard for residents.
A community economy moves from an activity towards shared governance when residents can help decide value, rules and next steps. Evaluation should therefore consider more than transaction counts. It should ask whether new relationships have formed, whether less visible capabilities have entered the resource network, and whether participants can genuinely change the scheme.