WELSH ASSEMBLY Deputy Minister for Farming and Food, Rebecca Evans, this week visited Carmarthen tenants who are using the ‘Time Banking’ scheme. For the past two years social enterprise ‘Spice’ has been working with Carmarthenshire County Council to develop the Time Credits programme which encourages local people to engage with their community and provide a service in doing so.
People receive Time Credits in gratitude for contributing time to their local community. Local groups then identify opportunities for people to give up their time, based on the interests, skills and availability of local people. They can then ‘spend’ Time Credits to access events, training and leisure activities, or to thank others in turn. The programme now has more than 600 members, aged between 3 and 97 years. These individuals have given over 17,500 hours back to their community through the scheme through a network of 70 organisations.
The Deputy Minister said of her visit to the residents of the Taf Myrddin Tenant Network: “The Wales Rural Development Programme (RDP) enables us to fund activities like Time Credits which directly support our rural communities. This excellent scheme brings people together who might not normally meet and offers them the chance to enrich their community through their own good deeds. The new Wales Rural Development Programme will be the largest and most ambitious in Wales’ history and offers huge opportunities to develop our rural economies and tackle rural poverty.”
The Deputy Minister was welcomed by Cllr Tegwen Devichand, Deputy Leader of Housing, and Cllr Jim Jones, Executive Board member for Environment and Public Protection. Rachel Gegeschidze, Spice Time Credits Facilitator in South West Wales, introduced a panel representing tenants and local organisations who spoke passionately about their experiences and extolled the benefits that Time Banking has brought to them.
Carmarthenshire County Councillor, Tegwen Devichand said: “The Time Credit scheme is so positive and I’m impressed with the difference it is making to people’s lives. It is a way of rewarding volunteers for the good work they are doing, work that we really appreciate.”
The Minister said that the The Wales Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 could provide, ‘£953m of European and Welsh Government funding to rural Wales to help increase the productivity of farming businesses, encourage sustainable management of natural resources and promote strong, sustainable rural economic growth in Wales and encourage greater community-led local development’.
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