Innovative concepts for community currencies by Anna-Lisa Schmalz, München, 24.07.2013
Towns and communities have an interest in stable local businesses in a stable economy. As well as supporting the local economy, each local authority has of course other social, cultural or ecological goals, which cannot be supported to the desired extent because of a lack of finance. A regional currency can be appropriately designed to support these goals so that less financial support is required from the local authority. It can keep spending power in the region and thus give extra business to small and medium enterprises.
About the author:
Anna-Lisa Schmalz works in Munich and is qualified in mathematics and information technology. She has co-developed software for banks and insurance companies. Since 2009, she has dedicated her efforts towards the theory and practice of complementary currencies. She played an important role in the Amper-Taler regional currency for Dachau and its affiliation to the inter-regional currency system Regios eG Rosenheim. In 2010, she wrote a concept paper for ‘regional economic communities’, which was used as the basis for ReWiG München eG (January 2011), ReWiG Schlehdorf eG (January 2012) and ReWiG Allgäu eG (July 2012).
Anna advises projects wanting to introduce a complementary currency and gives talks and workshops on various related themes. The original paper in German is here: PDF-Dokument herunterladen (779 KB, Creative Commons Lizenz CC BY-SA 3.0).
An English language website describing the concept is here.