Link: Time banking

Video from KarmaTube

Living without money

Twenty-two years ago Heidemarie Schwermer, a middle-aged secondary school teacher just emerging from a difficult marriage, moved with her two children from the village of Lueneburg to the city of Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of Germany, whose homeless population, she immediately noticed, was above average and striking in its intransigent hopelessness.

Her immediate reaction was shock. “This isn’t right, this can’t go on,” she said to herself. After careful reflection she set up what in Germany is called a Tauschring — a sort of swap shop — a place where people can exchange their skills or possessions for other skills and possessions, a money-free zone where a haircut could be rendered in return for car maintenance; a still-functioning but never-used toaster be exchanged for a couple of second-hand cardigans. She called it Gib und Nimm, Give and Take.

It was always Schwermer’s belief that the homeless didn’t need money to re-enter society: instead they should be able to empower themselves by making themselves useful, despite debts, destitution or joblessness. “I’ve always believed that even if you have nothing, you are worth a lot. Everyone has a place in this world.”

Read the full post here...
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6928744.ece

Nicholas Winton - In the Presence of Good

"Don't be content in your life just to do no wrong. Be prepared every day to try and do some good." Sir Nicolas Winton

Riches

The greatest good we can do for others is not to share our riches with them, but to reveal to them their own.

www.thoughtfortoday.org.uk

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

Greatest good

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own. --Benjamin Disraeli

Gratitude

We have thousands of opportunities every day to be grateful: for having good weather, to be able to sit in such a beautiful room on such comfortable furniture, to have slept well last night, to be able to get up, to be healthy, to have enough to eat. ... There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful; that's what life is. --Brother David Steindl-Rast

The Responsibility to Trust Your Head and Heart

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole."
-- Rollo May (1909-1994), American psychologist, from The Courage to Create

Read the full article here...
http://www.clarityconsulting.com/resources/success-tip.php?id=33&title=The%20Responsibility%20to%20Trust%20Your%20Head%20and%20Heart