• What's your line? by Matthew Ford and Sala Lloyd •
A pioneering trading ideas to strengthen communities is quickly becoming established in Gloucester with the opening of four new sites in the city.
Coney Hill, Matson, Podsmead and White City are all playing host to the Fair Shares project. It is a version of America schemes, which led to similar ideas in this country, such as the Local Exchange Trading Scheme (LETS) started in Stroud a decade ago.
A registered charity, Fair Shares works along similar lines, encouraging people in the community to donate their time to help others. For every hour of the time they give, an hour is "banked" for them to have in return as "credit" to be spent on the talents of others taking part in the scheme.
"Recruiting is going on at the moment on Gloucester," said Joy Rogers, projects co-ordinator. "We’re looking to get at least 20 people at all four sites. We find this is about the right number to make the project workable to start with. "We’ve got four projects running in the county now. The first, at Stonehouse, started up in April 1998 and was followed by others in Newent, Cheltenham, and now Gloucester".
Equal
The concept behind Fair Shares dictates everyone is equal on the scheme, whatever talent is offered an hour spent helping people guaranteed an hour back. "Public response has been good", said Joy. "We’ve got around 180 people involved with the group across the county with all kinds of services on offer. The most popular are things like gardening and giving lifts, but we’ve some unusual skills too like paper making and faith healing?
The group, are always on the lookout for new recruits and ultimately want to reflect the success enjoyed by some schemes on the USA which list thousands of memberships. "We want to recruit more men and more young people. We would also like local businesses to get in touch with us to offer concessions in return for services the community can provide," explained Joy. "Recently, Cheltenham Town Football Club joined the scheme giving free youth passes in return or help around the ground".
This June will see the first Fair Shares convention take place in Gloucester, bringing together schemes from around the country set up with help from Gloucestershire projects. There are currently three project sites in London, two in Newcastle and one in Hull.
Anyone wanting to find out more about the scheme can telephone Fair Shares on 01452 541337.
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