The Living Economies Educational Trust is a nationwide organization aiming to strengthen and help sustain regional economies by promoting interest-free means of exchange: currencies complementing money in local communities. Helen Dew in Carterton, and Margaret Jefferies here in Lyttelton, are Board members, and together initiated the LIFT Library here.

Many of the books and DVDs have been supplied by Living Economies; many can be bought on-line, where you can read short reviews of them.

Visit Living Economies and their bookshop at:

http://www.livingeconomies.nz/

Juliet has written reviews of many books in the library. Here is an excerpt of the latest book review:

LIFT Review: Choosing a Sustainable Future: Ideas and Inspiration from Ithaca
By Liz Walker

Did you know that Lyttelton Timebank was the first one in New Zealand? Margaret Jefferies, of Project Lyttelton, made a visit in 2004 to Ithaca, New York, with Helen Dew of Living Economies, after attending a conference on complementary currencies, and came back and started Lyttelton Timebank in 2005. Since then, Timebanking has gradually spread all over New Zealand. So has Living Economies, the backbone of the LIFT Library.

Margaret is a real “kick-starter”, which is why she visited Ithaca, because that city has a history of initiating ideas and systems that are focussed on community, sustainability, cooperation, local production, environmental stewardship, social justice, and honest prosperity.

This book, published in 2010, covers a huge range of developments in that area of Ithaca City and Tompkins County, famous for its Cornell University, its liberal politics, its Farmers Market and so on.

As the world’s population becomes increasingly based in expanding cities, and focussed on making money, the qualities of village and small community life are easily lost, along with our connection to nature. But grassroots action valuing cooperation between people and respect for all life is growing in many countries, including New Zealand. LIFT Library has much material on this aspect.

This book is a leader in this area. I urge all LIFT members who care about improving our local world to read it (as quickly as possible, so others can too!) and choose an aspect introduced here that you can focus on yourself. In the meantime, if you go to Youtube and look for Liz Walker, Ecovillage in Ithaca, you’ll see her background, which got her into writing this book.