Photography by Kate Munsch
Sitting in the corner of her favorite smoothie shop, Chinyere Oteh gives off a singular impression of calmness. She’s dressed in jeans and a light-green Lululemon Athletica jacket. Her gaze is steady without being penetrating, more like ambient light than a laser. She speaks deliberately, without hesitation.
“I’ve developed a radical worldview and way of living. I don’t believe formal institutions to be the only method of getting things done,” she says. “I’ve heard that radical actually means root—getting to the root of things—so you’re actually going back to honor the way things were done before.”
Maybe that’s why she’s attracted to the idea of time dollars, a type of currency that allows people to trade units of time instead of money. The time units are traded through a time bank—in Oteh’s case, the online Cowry Collective. Two people negotiate a service, and the provider gets paid one cowry, or time dollar, per hour. That person can then trade the cowry for an hour of service. The Cowry Collective also facilitates service-bartering.
Time-bank member Reggae Anwisye has traded organic vegetables for yoga classes, piano lessons, and more. “I am a pretty intense home gardener, so I always have a plethora of organic vegetables, but I don’t always have a plethora of money,” says Anwisye. “So people who are willing to trade, I am willing to trade with them.”
“Time-banking essentially reminds you what you’re good at—what skills you have, what services you have, and how you can share them with others,” Oteh says. “It helps you realign your value system.”
Cowrie shells are one of the earliest known currencies, beginning in China around 1200 BCE. But the concept of time-banking has local roots.
In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan’s administration pushed cuts to government grants funding inner-city service organizations, St. Louis’ Grace Hill Settlement House was forced to find another way to support senior citizens. Rather than helping elderly clients itself, Grace Hill encouraged neighbors to help one another. The idea evolved into the Member Organized Resource Exchange, in which neighbors could earn service credits for helping others.
During a conference on aging in the ’80s, a Washington University professor heard Edgar Cahn, the attorney credited with creating time-banking, talk about the concept of service credits. “She was like, ‘Oh my gosh! They’re doing something like that at Grace Hill!’” recalls Renee Marver, who helped launch MORE. After seeing the program firsthand, Cahn began touting it as a national model. At its height, the organization had thousands of members. Eventually, though, it fell out of use in many neighborhoods.
In the South City neighborhood where the program got its start, however, a form of the program is still in use, often to exchange rides. And Grace Hill’s Gold Wise hopes to relaunch the MORE time-dollar program this year in full force. “We’re trying to assist families to become self-sufficient,” says Wise, adding that the new program will be revamped to include elements such as background checks.
“I feel like St. Louis was ahead of other places with MORE,” says Oteh. “That’s why I think it’s important for time-banking to come back and have a stronghold here.”
It was in St. Louis that Oteh first heard about time banks. After graduating from Washington University, she attended the Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute, which teaches artists and social-service providers how to launch arts programs in under-resourced communities. In time-banking, she saw a way to help low-income neighborhoods. “It’s helping to build local economy and local community,” she says. “It’s helping you get to know people you might not otherwise meet.”
Several years ago, she created a Yahoo! Group for The Cowry Collective, asking friends and anyone else who was interested to join. With a $40 membership fee, however, growth was slow. With only about two dozen members at the time, she looked for other ways to promote nonmonetary exchanges. In 2011, she organized three Barter Fests in conjunction with bartering group underWAREs, at which attendees could exchange goods and services.
“Not having enough money to do whatever you want to do in your life poses a lot of issues for people, and causes a lot of depression and frustration,” says Oteh. “Finding a model that can complement the capitalistic model that we are all so wedded to and entrenched in was really appealing to me.”
It’s November 17, 2013, and Oteh stands in front of a roomful of strangers at Saint Louis University’s Fresh Gatherings Cafe. She’s one of the presenters at "St. Louis Soup Across the Delmar Divide," a grass-roots dinner devoted to bridging the city’s racial and socioeconomic divisions.
Among the possibilities presented at the November gathering: making canvas bags with the message “North City Has Heart and Soul,” stocked with maps that highlight the area’s offerings; farming vacant lots in North City; building a sculpture of functioning nontraditional instruments… After all of the ideas are presented, attendees vote for their favorite, and the winner receives the “pot” of donations.
This past August, during the first-ever "St. Louis Soup Across the Delmar Divide" event, artist Damon Davis proposed building a “Wailing Wall” on a lot near Delmar Boulevard. He wants people north of the wall to write letters to people south of it, and vice versa. Davis then plans to transcribe the messages on a blog. “I want it to be a symbol,” he says, “and get people to start a conversation about how segregated the city is.”
At the November meeting, attendees end up voting for The Cowry Collective’s idea, rewarding Oteh’s group with $420. “People were just really interested in how they can help each other, especially in this economy,” says Kristin Fleischmann Brewer, manager of programs at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, which co-organized these discussions about the region’s race relations after a BBC story aired about the Delmar Divide in March 2012. “It’s really nice to feel like you can help people, but then also receive help in return without always having to think about money.”
After the meeting, Oteh moved the collective to hOurworld (hourworld.org), an online directory of time banks, and lowered the annual membership fee to $25. She also began holding training sessions to recruit members. She hopes to sign up 100 people this year.
Building a time bank is a challenge, though. “I think the MORE program was so successful because it was run by neighbors,” says Marver. “They were smart about connecting. They knew what their neighbors needed.” Marver says the key was having leaders who could help connect neighbors in need with those offering help.
The idea of connecting St. Louisans fits Oteh’s personality. “Chinyere is a natural person connector,” says Anwisye. “She’s very good at making interpersonal connections, and I think that’s the thing that makes her ability to put people together in a time bank so special.”
“My philosophy is that people should just seek happiness and try to fulfill their passions,” says Oteh. She encourages others to question consumerism and “working to death for that eventual retirement.
“Your life is improved when you’re able to fill your basic needs,” she says, “and do what you love to do.”
The Cowry Collective holds its next orientation March 9 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Gya Community Gallery & Fine Craft Shop (2700 Locust). For more information, go to thecowrycollective.blogspot.com or pulitzerarts.org.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated from an earlier version, which had indicated that "St. Louis Soup Across the Delmar Divide" is synonomous with Sloup. We sincerely regret the error.
