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Posts Tagged ‘berkshires’

Local Cash System Expands

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 11, 2022| 2 Comments »

Photo: Yasmin Amer / WBUR.
Leah Barber, a volunteer member of the BerkShares board, shows off the local currency in its paper form. Local currency benefits local businesses.

Back when I was working at the Boston Fed, I sometimes covered innovative currencies in the magazine. I was especially interested currencies that were designed to help local communities. BerkShares was one. Recently, I learned that not only is the paper money still in use in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, but it’s expanding to include a digital option.

Yasmin Amer reported at WBUR radio, “At The Magic Fluke in Sheffield, rows of wooden string instruments line the wall: ukuleles, violins, and a triangular instrument called the fluke.

” ‘The look is different, the sound is a little different,’ said Dale Webb, who designed the fluke. ‘It’s got a richer, fuller sound.’

“Dale and Phyllis Webb co-own this shop, where a basic instrument runs about $250. Since most customers don’t carry that much cash, most opt to use their credit cards. That comes with a fee for the business.

” ‘If somebody spends money at our store mostly with credit cards, I’m paying anywhere from 2.7% to 3%,’ Phyllis said.

“A sign hanging by the instruments inside the shop reminds customers there is another way to pay: a local currency called BerkShares. It can help business owners like the Webbs avoid the fees that accompany credit card transactions.

” ‘Those dollars through Visa, MasterCard, Discover, do nothing for our community,’ Phyllis said. ‘They just whisk away into the atmosphere to some other place that couldn’t care less about the Berkshires.’

“To keep more money in the region, the Webbs and hundreds of other business owners have joined this experiment in local currency. People in the Berkshires can exchange U.S. dollars for BerkShares, for free, at any of nine participating bank branches. The exchange rate is one dollar for one BerkShare.

“As of March, it’s also possible to transfer funds from almost any bank straight into the BerkShares app, which acts like a digital wallet. There is one catch: Transfers can take up to six business days.

“When a customer uses digital or paper BerkShares instead of a credit card, business owners don’t pay any transaction fees. There’s also an incentive to keep BerkShares circulating in the local economy instead of converting them back to dollars. Converting from BerkShares to USD involves a 1.5% fee, which is about half of a typical credit card fee.

“Members of the Schumacher Center for New Economics, a nonprofit in Great Barrington, came up with the idea for a Berkshires currency more than 15 years ago. Since then, more than 350 businesses have signed on to accept paper BerkShares, and about 70 also are using the new digital version. …

“The goal of a local currency like BerkShares comes from a basic economic idea: When more money stays in a community, it increases revenue for local businesses over time, and allows those businesses to grow.

“Leah Barber, a volunteer board member with the BerkShares program, likes the convenience of using the new digital BerkShares app. However, she still keeps a wad of the blue and green bills in her purse. …

” ‘If I whip out my BerkShares, it makes you think, “Oh, maybe I should be paying in BerkShares too,” ‘ Barber said. …

“Hayley Ranolde, a customer service manager at the Berkshire Food Co-op in Great Barrrington, said she typically sees no more than a handful of people paying with digital BerkShares each day. The co-op is one of the early adopters of the new digital currency. For those transactions, Ranolde uses a cell phone with the BerkShares app since the cash registers don’t accept that type of currency. …

“If more people used BerkShares, especially local vendors, Ranolde said it would be a game changer. The store would be able to keep more BerkShares circulating without having to convert them back into dollars.

“Though BerkShares have been around for more than a decade, the currency hasn’t achieved widespread adoption. … BerkShares advocates have high hopes the new digital currency will reach more people. …

” ‘I think that the digital way is the way of the world,’ said Phyllis Webb. ‘We’re excited to be part of of a first opportunity to see how this works with a local currency.’ “

If your community had a system like this, would you use it? Or would it feel like one thing too many to remember when you’re rushing to finish errands?

More at WBUR, here.

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One Afghanistan Rescue

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2022| 7 Comments »

Photo: Jessica Lustig.
Jessica Lustig, left, and Lesley Friedman Rosenthal, part-time Berkshires residents, went to Portugal to greet students, faculty and family from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. Thanks in part to their efforts, the school was rescued and is resettling in Portugal, along with its founder and director, Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, center.

There are still small community newspapers that are doing actual reporting. Not where I live, where the the “local” paper mostly republishes content from a chain headed up by USA Today. It’s been so bad for so long, a group of community leaders is raising money for a nonprofit local newspaper such as we’ve begun to see around the country.

But I digress. Today’s Berkshire Eagle article is not a local story but I am not sure it would have happened if the reporter had not taken the time to interview local people.

Felix Carroll wrote that from a home in Otis, Massachusetts, “a daring, dangerous, complicated and ultimately successful rescue effort was coordinated beginning last August. …

“The denouement came on Dec. 13, when a community of school children from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) landed in Lisbon, Portugal — to safety, freedom and a future far afield from one that would have demanded their silence.

“Lesley Friedman Rosenthal, a part-time resident of Otis, was in Portugal to greet them. So was Jessica Lustig, a part-time resident of Great Barrington.

“ ‘It was remarkable to watch the young music students, their faculty and families come off the plane,’ said Rosenthal, president of the United States-based Friends of ANIM. ‘These 273 individuals, whose names, birth dates and national ID numbers I had helped work through so many lists for government agencies, and about whose lives and safety I had been so concerned in the past four months, suddenly appeared before us, with a look on their faces I can only describe as hopefulness.’

“Rosenthal and Lustig make up two-thirds of the board members of Friends of ANIM, the charitable group that, beginning in 2016, has supported the school, the first and only music academy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

“The school, which was inaugurated in 2010, had gained international fame for teaching Afghan and Western music to a co-ed student body against the backdrop of threats from the Taliban, the militant Islamist regime that had prohibited nonreligious music outright when it led Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

“The third member of Friends of ANIM is the school’s founder and director, Dr. Ahmad Naser Sarmast, who still suffers the physical effects following a Taliban attack on his school in 2014.

“The philanthropic efforts of Friends of ANIM took a dramatic turn in August upon the withdrawal of U.S. military troops in the country and the ensuing consolidation of control by the Taliban.

“Rosenthal, who serves as chief operating officer of The Juilliard School, the performing arts conservatory in New York City, and Lustig, the founder of a New York City-based publicity, advocacy and consulting business, engaged in round-the-clock efforts to assist Dr. Sarmast in rescuing the school.

“They reached out and received the support of political leaders, military veterans, academics, and artists, including local musicians Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax.

‘It became clear, just in a matter of days, that the only way to salvage the school was to actually do a mass evacuation and airlift of the entire school community,’ Rosenthal said.

“In the meantime, videos began surfacing of Taliban members making a public show of destroying musical instruments. The Taliban had taken over the school campus. …

“News reports from Kabul told of how seven busloads of people associated with the school were left waiting at the airport for 17 hours, unable to board their plane amid fears of a terrorist attack. With that in mind, the evacuation efforts became less conspicuous; the efforts moved more slowly and comprised waves of smaller groups.

“In the end, the evacuation consisted of five airlift flights of 273 school members (including students, staff and immediate family) over a six-week period from Oct. 2 through late November.

“The first stop was Doha, in Qatar, whose government provided shelter and helped negotiate with the Taliban to ensure safe passage. Then, the school community flew on Dec. 13 to Portugal, where they have been offered asylum.

“ ‘Friends of ANIM is now working to reestablish the school in Portugal so that Afghan music and music education can continue for the girls and boys of the ANIM community,’ said Rosenthal.

“Rosenthal and Lustig had never imagined that their charitable efforts to support a school 7,000 miles away would ever come to this — essentially to establishing a war room in the Berkshires in the year 2021. …

“In December 2014, [a] suicide bomb attack at a student concert [in Kabul killed] an audience member and injured many others. Sarmast had to be airlifted to Australia for treatment. His hearing has been permanently damaged.

“ ‘The needs were clear,’ said Lustig. ‘He had threats to his life and threats to his school.’

“With the formation of Friends of ANIM in 2016, Sarmast and his staff and students would come to know that the world has his back.”

More at the Berkshire Eagle, here.

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