Launch of the Koha Cooperative community currency model.

In New Zealand, as with many places with a central bank, the population has lost control of it's money issuance and banking industry to private persons.

This creates a dynamic of opposing interests between banking, which uses legal tender, and family wealth.  Centralisation and globalisation are tools through which the natural sources, national resources and human resources are exploited. 

The cost is incremental over time but the results are certain and include:
–  individual suffering through deprivation of human needs (e.g. shelter, healthy food, ability to travel freely, right to justice)
– disfunctinal familes,
– crimes of necessity (actually a dichotomy),
– depressed local communities and weak associations between those that live in close proximity to each other. 

In New Zealand presently, the strength of ties between individuals in community is largely insufficient to protect the environment. For example: neighbors to commercial orchards are legally dis-empowered from preventing secondary poisoning through spray drift or leeching to the water table.

While there is cooperation between cliques and neighbours there is a huge opportunity to improve this through better communication.

This might include a local register of:
1/ Who has what skills to offer?
2/ Who has what resources to share?
3/ Who needs / wants for anything?

It should also include a culture of discussing important issues and making decisions democratically within the appropriate forum i.e. locally for a local issue.

We can leap from the present model of scarcity to sufficiency then abundance by pairing improved local communication with a community currency.  It's a formalised model of making promises locally to enable giving and receiving in the community as a whole.

The following video is of a launch event designed to give the model a fast start in any community.

This information has been made available for any area that wishes to copy it on www.kohacooperative.net.

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