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Excerpt from the article: A market where you don't need money!  (full article)

Rebuilding local economies ravaged by globalization is certainly a daunting project. When people think of this task, they usually think of marches, boycotts, letter writing campaigns, and other labour intensive tactics. Well there is another tool in our arsenal - a tool that is highly effective, easy to implement, and creates its own popular support. It involves something that people have to do almost every day: spend money.
 

The tool that I'm speaking of is community currency. Creating a local currency increases the quality of community life by mobilizing unused time, tools, goods and services. Everyone in a community has skills, time, tools or goods to share; local currencies are simply a way of facilitating an exchange of these goods and services with neighbours. The growing popularity of these systems is based on a common appealing principle: money should work for people, not the other way around!
 

Over 500 U.S. towns issued community scrips during the depression and now thousands of alternative currency systems are in place around the world. For example, in Ithaca NY, 3000 individuals and 300 businesses use "Ithaca Hours" - a system which has created over $1.5 million in local trading. Local currency systems help shorten food links, and are highly successful in helping communities recover from economic decline.
 

Community currencies are popular because they enable people to achieve a number of different goals. They help to alleviate underemployment by increasing people's buying power. This allows people to meet needs and even afford luxuries (like music lessons for a child or a romantic catered dinner) beyond their current cash income. The system also promotes sustainable forms of consumption by connecting people with local resources instead of goods brought from far away. Increased buying power is not at the mall, but is for goods and services made right in town.   (full article)