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The Creator
It is said, in fact by the man himself, that the idea for a time bank popped into the mind of Edgar S. Cahn - an American Human Rights professor- as he was lying at death’s door in a hospital bed after a near-fatal heart attack. Edgar S. Cahn thought about creating a kind of extended family, in which the exchanging of favors would allow the also the less fortunate to survive, where the social economy is worth more than the financial one, where to be part of a system (or at least part of the micro-system that he imagined) one would have to bank on one’s own willingness to do something for other people and that this would be recognized as sufficient currency to exchange. Thus the Time Dollar Institute was born, with Professor Cahn as its president and director.
The professor’s interest in this theme is no accident; after graduation (1957) and receiving his PhD in Jurisprudence at Yale (1960), Professor Cahn immediately concerned himself with how the law can be used as an instrument of social equity. His first political responsibilities brought him side by side with Kennedy, who, among other duties, trusted him with the role of amicus brief (impartial advisor) in the civil rights cases of the early 60s.
These were also the years in which, with his wife Jean Camper, pioneers both, Cahn became involved in the fight against poverty. He didn’t have to go far to see schoolchildren fainting in class from hunger. His was a battle fought at home and his first book, called Hunger in America, weighed heavily on the subsequent legislation of the Johnson administration, which went on to ensure that nutritional products arrived in American communities where malnutrition was particularly widespread, in particular the communities of Native Americans.
At the end of the 60s Cahn left government office to work with the Field Foundation, on whose behalf he began to work with Native American communities.
Our Brother's Keeper, the Indian in White America is the book that puts the seal on this undertaking on behalf of the indigenous communities of America, whose principal activist provided the majority of research in the book. Our Brother’s Keeper was a decisive step towards self-government among Native Americans in the government’s agenda.
In the 80s, the decade of the heart attack that left him facing death, he quit teaching jurisprudence and created the Time Dollar Institute and defined the seminal idea of a Time Bank, which would spread to over 36 countries including Sweden, Japan and Canada. In a recent interview with Jon Snow on Community Channel, professor Cahn affirms that in the last 18 years over 65 Time Banks have begun operating in the USA and in the last six years over 73 Time Banks have started in Britain.
In the 90s Cahn continued to work tirelessly, refining his critical theories and producing new ideas for social justice, among which are the concept of Co-production and the Time Dollar Youth Court, operating in Washington since 1996 in the administration of justice for minors.
(09/06/2006)
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