Calderdale Green Currency

The Calderdale Green Currency Group originally consisted of local environmentalists, economists, community activists and businessmen, concerned with improving the quality of life in Calderdale. Early on the group approached The Ground Floor Project - to whom we are closely affiliated - for support in getting the scheme up and running. Its extremely likely that, without the support of the Ground Floor Project or a similar group that believes in nurturing initiatives which benefit the local community and enhances local opportunity, this scheme would ever have been launched.

Our aims were:

• To establish a local currency in Calderdale backed by local labour and by barter.
   
• To persuade local businesses to accept this currency in full or part exchange for services and goods.
   
• To support volunteering within the community, and to reward volunteers’ efforts in local currency
   
• To establish a facility to sell local goods and produce in full or part exchange for local currency.
   
• To establish a minimum wage for an hours of general labour as the basis of the currency exchange .

Perhaps the scheme's biggest failure was that many of the original members (in particular the economists) moved on to other projects even before the scheme had properly launched and the day-to-day running of the scheme fell onto a few volunteers who had the practical expertise but not necessarily the time to keep the scheme expanding.