Centro Bartolome de las Casas and local currency
Oranges, tomatoes and beans in exchange for soap and clothes. You leave
a product at the community shop and you get another one. This is how
this project started. Centro Bartolome de las Casas supports
organized groups in four communities in El Salvador and facilitates economic and
social interchanges between them.
Alternative merchandise channels as community shops, local and intercommunity barter markets are
actively promoted and facilitate direct exchange of goods and services
and indirect exchange through a local currency, the Sol (sun).
The same local currency is used to finance productive
projects, consumer credits and capital for community shops.
Cheap loans
Saving - and credit groups, mostly women, get a
chance to borrow money from their ROSCA (Rotating Saving and Credit
Association) group to stimulate business. The average loan is worth
about 50-100$ and is partly issued in dollars and partly in Soles. The
interest on the Soles part of the loan is lower (10%) than on the
dollar part (15%) and is much lower than average microloans in El
Salvador (25-45%).
Moreover, the interest paid is put in the ROSCA
where it is used for new loans. The loans are invested in projects such
as the productions of brooms, a sauna, a chicken farm, small
restaurants, etc.
Soles in circulation
The Soles can be used to buy products from the above mentioned
projects, at the community shops or at special markets where there can
only be paid with Soles, but they are also accepted by people not
involved in the project, such as bus drivers, for example. One sol is
worth one dollar (national currency of El Salvador). Dollars can be
exchanged for Soles but Soles cannot be exchanged back for dollars. In
July 2005 about 1000 Soles were in circulation. This does not seem a
big amount, but the average income of the people in the area is only $3
a day, meaning that for them, it does make a big difference.
Distribution of the methods
Other organisations are interested to start comparable projects. For
example, after a publication about the project in a catholic magazine,
read all over Central-America, a church group from Honduras organized a
lottery and used the profit to finance the trip of three of its members to
Centro Bartolome to learn more about the project.
Centro Bartolome de la Casa has its own internetsite, please click here.
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