Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Workfair

[Jed Stuart (jstuart]

I agree that trying to get everyone to do the same amount of work is not a
good idea. That becomes an extra, and energy draining, job in itself.

Our group is just in the formation stage so there is not a lot of work to do
yet, but we have been working on the principle of people doing what they
enjoy to do, what they are good at or find challenging. This probably may
not work so well when the initial enthusiasms are exhausted, and the
cleaning needs to be done regularly, I dont know.

I have been involved with the Letsystem here in Northern NSW, Australia and
have often wondered how it could be applied to a community. It is a way of
extending and bartering beyond a one to one exchange. There are lots of
Letsystems here that have been running for around 10 years now. Many of you
will
probably know of it.

A community could have its own small Letsystem, e.g. everyone pays the
community an amount per month say 100 units or varying depending on ability
to pay. The community then pays the members to do jobs in Letsunits, or
maybe just the jobs that nobody feels like doing. Letsystems are generally
computerised and give regular statements of the balance of any member,
however a small Letsystem is easy to operate manually.

Essentially it gives a member a loan untill they find a way of earning units
and getting their balance back to zero.

I have found it very usefull in the wider community, especially when I
havn't had spare cash, but don't have any experience of it working in a
smaller community.

The community would have to decide whether everyone should try and balance
their account, in so doing contributing egual energy within the community.
If this was the decision they would be able to do this by working for the
community or some other way of earning their units e.g. working for another
person in the community, selling something to another person in the
community,
being given credits by other members in the community who like them or feel
sorry for them. The Letsystem adds a new dimension to equalising energy
exchange, rather than atempting to do equal work for the community.

Also it makes it easy to quantify the degree of inequality that is
acceptable e.g. I dont mind having a 300unit credit while you have a 500
unit deficit, but if my credit goes up to around 10,000 and you deficit to
20,000,
I might like to get some energy from you in some way.

Better than having an internal Letsystem just for the community would be for
the community to be part of a wider Letsystem, if there is a healthy one
handy. Members of the community could then balance their accounts with
people outside the community and also the community could employ people
outside the community to do some things. If there isn't one, then the
community
could join up trusted outside people to achieve the same objective.

Jed Stuart
Mullumbimby Cohousing Group (just a warm fantasy at present)

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Sandelin (Exchange) <robsan [at] Exchange.Microsoft.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org>
Date: Saturday, 11 September 1999 12:55 pm
Subject: RE: Workfair


>My advice would be to set your expectations low to start, then increase
them
>if need be. Start with perhaps 2 hours a  month.  Also I have seen several
>groups that use their large membership meetings to announce
"opportunities",
>work that needs to be done. Also have seen communities that take time in
the
>meeting to recognize work done, hip hip hoorays for the lawn mowing.
>Positive recognition encourages volunteerism. Other places use group
meeting
>time for accounting for your required hours.
>
>A lot of time, there is a great deal of variation in how self starting
>people are. Some folks are very talented at seeing what is needed, and then
>taking care of it. Others lack this ability and need to have things pointed
>out to them.
>
>There is also a great deal of variation in what "done" means depending on
>the task. I go through this a lot with my family. To one person, doing the
>dishes means wiping down the counters and table. To another it means just
>doing the dishes, not my job to wipe counters.  For our commonhouse we have
>a pretty detailed list of the tasks and the chouse team keeps tabs and
>bugs/instructs people as required.
>
>One of the key definitions to think about is maintenance vs. projects. Some
>folks in my group have not seen project work as something they need to be
>involved in. In fact, they get annoyed at peoples project expectations -
>stop creating all these projects they plead.  The garden for example can be
>seen as a "project" while cleaning the commonhouse gutters is maintenance.
>
>We do a monthly deep cleaning of our commonhouse, which is simply assigned
>out annually by month with each resident, including renters, assigned to a
>team for a particular month. The teams coordinate amoung themselves when to
>gather and then they do the task list for that month. The monthly cleaning
>usually only takes a couple of hours to accomplish. This is not optional,
>and the Chouse team monitors this and if you don't accomplish the tasks you
>get a good dose of guilt tripping/reminder of your responsibilities.
>
>We also do work parties as volunteer opportunities. Often these involve
>potlucks/beer and have pretty much always generated enough energy to
>accomplish the tasks at hand. We try to have non-physical tasks involved as
>well so those with bad backs, etc. can contribute. We built our whole
>commonhouse that way.
>
>I have seen some groups do very involved work systems with accountability
>enforced by monitoring, sign in log sheets, etc. Perhaps this works for
>them. Setting expectations and allowing/encouraging people to volunteer
>works well for us. The goal for us is to get the task done and have people
>feel good about it, not try to make everybody do the same amount of work,
or
>create "participatory fairness" That concept is a dead end road.
>
>Rob Sandelin
>Sharingwood
>

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Sandelin (Exchange) <robsan [at] Exchange.Microsoft.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org>
Date: Saturday, 11 September 1999 12:55 pm
Subject: RE: Workfair


>My advice would be to set your expectations low to start, then increase
them
>if need be. Start with perhaps 2 hours a  month.  Also I have seen several
>groups that use their large membership meetings to announce
"opportunities",
>work that needs to be done. Also have seen communities that take time in
the
>meeting to recognize work done, hip hip hoorays for the lawn mowing.
>Positive recognition encourages volunteerism. Other places use group
meeting
>time for accounting for your required hours.
>
>A lot of time, there is a great deal of variation in how self starting
>people are. Some folks are very talented at seeing what is needed, and then
>taking care of it. Others lack this ability and need to have things pointed
>out to them.
>
>There is also a great deal of variation in what "done" means depending on
>the task. I go through this a lot with my family. To one person, doing the
>dishes means wiping down the counters and table. To another it means just
>doing the dishes, not my job to wipe counters.  For our commonhouse we have
>a pretty detailed list of the tasks and the chouse team keeps tabs and
>bugs/instructs people as required.
>
>One of the key definitions to think about is maintenance vs. projects. Some
>folks in my group have not seen project work as something they need to be
>involved in. In fact, they get annoyed at peoples project expectations -
>stop creating all these projects they plead.  The garden for example can be
>seen as a "project" while cleaning the commonhouse gutters is maintenance.
>
>We do a monthly deep cleaning of our commonhouse, which is simply assigned
>out annually by month with each resident, including renters, assigned to a
>team for a particular month. The teams coordinate amoung themselves when to
>gather and then they do the task list for that month. The monthly cleaning
>usually only takes a couple of hours to accomplish. This is not optional,
>and the Chouse team monitors this and if you don't accomplish the tasks you
>get a good dose of guilt tripping/reminder of your responsibilities.
>
>We also do work parties as volunteer opportunities. Often these involve
>potlucks/beer and have pretty much always generated enough energy to
>accomplish the tasks at hand. We try to have non-physical tasks involved as
>well so those with bad backs, etc. can contribute. We built our whole
>commonhouse that way.
>
>I have seen some groups do very involved work systems with accountability
>enforced by monitoring, sign in log sheets, etc. Perhaps this works for
>them. Setting expectations and allowing/encouraging people to volunteer
>works well for us. The goal for us is to get the task done and have people
>feel good about it, not try to make everybody do the same amount of work,
or
>create "participatory fairness" That concept is a dead end road.
>
>Rob Sandelin
>Sharingwood
>