The store where money is no good

Last week I put up a post about the Willunga Community Share. Then this week I came across this great article “Birth of a FreeStore”  about the FreeStore in Media, Pennsylvania (USA). Yet another fantastic example of how people are creating beautiful human-centred alternatives to the money-based consumer culture. The following quote from the FreeStore website eloquently summarises the ethos that underpins these initiatives.

” Everyone has things they can give. Everyone has needs to be met.

Our philosophy is simple. Money is not needed for everything. With some creativity, we can get many of our needs met through gift-giving, sharing, community-collaboration, and simple kindness and connection. So much of this is within our reach, but our consumer culture has led us to be dependent on money, exclusively, to get our needs met. No longer. Many creative people are establishing new ways to get our needs met in other ways, and The FreeStore is part of that new (and ultimately very old) way of doing things. Won’t you join us? “

For more on Gift Economies this short film “Sacred Economies with Charles Eisenstein” is a good starting point.