Soon everyone can exchange good deeds in the Õnnepank - world’s first e-Bank of Happiness.
The goal of the bank is to promote the idea of doing good deeds …for free. Bringing together those who are in need of help and those who can help. In the e-bank one can exchange information on needs, offer help and register good deeds. For every good deed you get a Star of Gratitude and the person with the biggest number of Stars … will become one of the happiest in the world.
Technology and people
Birgit Tolmann, one of the founders of the Bank of Happiness says that the goal of the Bank is to change how people think. That they shouldn’t measure all our deeds in money and sometimes the traditional way of helping our friends and neighbours without receiving material compensation is the best thing to do.
Until now the Bank has hold promotion events and has advertised its ideas on the web and media. Now, with the e-bank the whole project gets totally new power.
Technology as big part of the project
Technology helps to bring the people in need and the people with the possibility to help together. There are many ways we can help each other, sometimes with even with very little effort. In many cases however we don’t do that because we don’t have the information.
For example we don’t know if our elderly neighbour is in serious need of some groceries, that we might easily pick up together with our own goods in the Super Market. Babysitting, car-pooling, there are many ways we can do things together.
There are no other Happiness banks in the world, therefore there were also no standard procedures or general rules for such a bank. All the procedures had to be created from scratch and this was a big work. The procedures were re-thought a number of times. As the e-Bank is meant for everybody the team put serious effort into creating an easy to use interface. The result is good. The design is pretty and you don’t get lost in the system. As with ordinary banks the team had to put thought into security. Everyone in the bank is authenticated with an ID-card or internet-bank account.
Managing a volunteer team
Bank of happiness was started as a volunteer project one and a half years ago. Although the web development was financed by The Estonian fund of citizen society the overall project has been run with practically no money and has achieved a lot considering that.
“It is really difficult to run a volunteer project”, says Tolmann, “Sooner or later people start to worry about their work and families and tend to drop out.” But The Bank of Happiness has succeeded. They have built a strong core group and there are now also local representatives in the counties and towns of Estonia.
Future plans
The next few months after the launch of the e-Bank will be spent on fine-tuning the IT system and promoting it. The team has also many plans for developing the e-Bank – adding additional functionality to it and creating new possibilities for people to interact. One of the new initiatives is to get the State and local municipalities involved by letting the social workers use the system. This would greatly benefit the whole society, but needs some minor changes in the legislation.
Hopefully the project gives a good example for the rest of the world and there will be such initiatives launched in other countries as well.
The currency of the bank was called “thank-notes” or “tänutäht” in estonian rather than star-of-whatnot …
Well, in fact the idea is not new at all – there are initiatives like that all over the world. for instance, Uk Time Banking started already in 1998. It’s a bit far-fetched to brag that Estonian Õnnepank is the world’s first!
Time Banking UK is the national umbrella charity linking and supporting time banks across the country by providing inspiration, guidance and mutual help.
Time banks link people locally to share their time and skills. Everyones time is equal: one hour of your time earns you one time credit to spend when you need. What is time banking? Click here to find out more.
Time banking in the UK has witnessed spectacular growth since it first started in 1998. Read about the history of time banking.
The latest statistics for time banks in the UK are:…
* 108 active time banks
* 97 developing time banks
* 2 neighbourhood time banks
* 11655 participants actively involved in time banking
* 957035 hours traded between participants to date
Find out more about Time Banking UK the organisation.