6. Finance

Take Back Finance: Investing in Futures

Chapter 6 of Take Back the Economy focuses on how, in a community economy, investment is used to transparently build a future for all.

This means identifying the type of future we are interested in building, the types of community investments that might contribute to this future and the returns that might be achieved on these investments.

Taking Back Finance, Chapter 6 Tool

You might find the Chapter 6 Template useful when using this tool.

 

Extra Resources

If you are teaching Take Back the Economy, you will find materials and extra resources (including films) for this Chapter in the Lectures 11 and 12 section on Teaching TBTE in Hong Kong. 

Community Economies researchers have produced two terrific films about community-based financing in the form of ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations), which are found all over the world. The Banker Ladies (by Caroline Shenaz Hossein) is about three 'banker ladies' in Canada and it provides insights into the crucial role that savings groups and credit associations can play in the lives of women as they provide for their families and themselves. Doing Finance Differently (by Kelly Dombroski) is about savings groups and credit associations in Indonesia, including those that are used by women as well as those that operate on a village basis. 

This chapter includes the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI) tool. This tool has been used by Katherine Gibson and colleagues to value an urban commons initiative in Paris. The 2020 open-access article is available here. 

Stephen Healy has used the CEROI tool with colleagues in Aotearoa New Zealand to value an urban commons initiative in post-earthquake Christchurch. The written report is available here, and there is a YouTube video of a presentation based on the research and report. This presentation is by Kelly Dombroski, one of the research team.