Fernie Exchange Resource and Networking System (FERNS)

From child care to piano lessons to cooking a meal, to website design and gardening, there's no limit to the ways to trade in a community currency. I help you, and you help another—and someone else helps me. The recipients of help become, in turn, the providers of help, and what goes around comes around. The FERNS you earn by helping others can be used to receive services or help from someone else. When you spend your community currency, someone else earns it.

Register for the Fernie Exchange Resource Network and tell us what you need or want to offer.

How does it work?

The Fernie Exchange and Resource Network System (FERNS) is a community currency that allows local residents to exchange goods and services without using money. Each transaction takes place online, where we track the exchange of FERNS traded and allows you to easily record and keep track of your trades.

Step 1: Your car needs an oil change. You either look through the Offers List or do a search to see if anyone is offering oil changes or car maintenance. Lucky you - Peter is offering oil changes, and you must bring your own oil and oil filter.

Step 2: You click "Contact Peter" under his listing and fill out the form to send him an email. Peter responds later that evening and you both agree on a time and place for the oil change. Peter estimates it will take one hour, and cost 10 FERNs.

Step 3: The oil change takes place and you leave, satisfied that your car has fresh oil. Peter goes online invoices you for ten FERNs.

Step 4:The next time you go online you get an email and see that Peter has invoiced you for one FERN. You click on the link and go to the 'my accounts' page on www.localcurrency.ca. You click 'confirm' and your account is debited ten FERNs.

Is this a form of Barter?

No, barter almost always involves bargaining between two individuals to establish the relative worth of the goods or services they wish to exchange. There is no bargaining with a community currency. When you purchase something you are in no way obliged to provide a service to the seller; you 'pay' for what you have received by delivering/selling something to another trader in the community.

Why not just use cash?

A community currency acts like a supplementary currency, creating an additional stream of value in a community. It is not designed to operate in place of the current economic system, but to enhance it. By supplementing conventional cash flow with a local currency, a community can maintain full employment and protect itself from changes and fluctuations in the national money supply. Community currencies are as versatile as conventional ones.

Who benefits?
Community Currencies change communities. A community currency relies on trust and transparency and fosters community. Members seek each other out, meet face-to-face, and get to know their neighbors. FERNS fosters the “small town values” of neighborliness, generosity, and self-reliance. Community currencies foster the real wealth of communities and rebuild a sense of worth and self-esteem among the users. Around the world they report an increased sense of vitality in all sectors of the communities using them.

Who uses a local currency?

Our local currency can be used by anyone in and around Fernie. More members are signing up each week. From the script used during the depression era in 1930's to today's many frequent flyer programs, alternative currencies have always played a role in society. Today there are over 2500 different local currency systems operating in countries throughout the world.

Register for the Fernie Exchange Resource Network and tell us what you want or can offer.

This initiative is coordinated by Advocates for Local Living, a Wildsight Elk Valley Branch project.