Turkey's Changemakers: A Bank Where the Currency is Time, Instead of Money: 'Zumbara'
The latest episode of “Turkey’s Changemakers” features Ayşegül Güzel, who brought the time bank concept, which is being implemented in 33 countries across the world, to Turkey under the name of Zumbara. Ayşegül Güzel is making a difference by establishing an alternative movement. Discovering the time bank concept in Barcelona and deciding to implement it in Turkey, Ms. Güzel officially brought www.zumbara.com to life on October 7th 2010.
Time, instead of money, is the currency at Zumbara. Members of Zumbara earn hours in exchanges for services they offer, and accumulate them in their accounts. And they use those hours when they need a service themselves. Members of Zumbara offer a wide range of services, including but not limited to English classes, courses on photography, web site design, and art criticism. To date, 2.200 members signed up and exchanged over 200 services through Zumbara.
Zumbara enables individuals to put their talents to use for mutual aid. Based on the belief that time is the most valuable commodity, Zumbara encourages people to spend their time to support one another.
Zumbara was selected as one of the top 20 projects which were part of an international competition called Youth Action Net Global Fellows. The project also received awards from MIT Enterprise Forum Turkey Business Plan Competition, Bilgi University Social Entrepreneurship, Garanti and Kagider’s Turkey’s Women Entrepreneur Competition and E-Tohum.
