Timebank Whakatū was instigated by two members of the Wellington timebank. On moving to Nelson/Whakatū and seeing that there was nothing active in our area, they started to bring a group together to look at setting up something similar here. At the end of August, a meeting was held at the WAA! to bring together others who might be interested in helping to get the project off the ground. From that meeting, a Steering Group was formed.
The steering group looked at other timebanks to see what has worked and what hasn't. The Wellington Timebank has been very successful with over 1000 members, and our steering group – who include four previous Wellington and Hutt Valley timebank members, including one who was on Wellington’s original board, decided to model the Whakatū timebank on this; to use the same hOurworld platform and to use the Wellington Timebank processes and policies as templates.
A pilot was started in September and a test group has been trading – mending clothes, squeezing lemons, moving house, tidying gardens, spinning wool. Word’s gotten out.
A very big thank you to Wellington Timebank for all the help, sharing information and resources.
