PHILADELPHIA EQUAL DOLLARS

EQUAL DOLLARS / Philadelphia Alternative Community Currency

Set -- $1, $5, $10

A community currency that operated for nearly 20 years by Resources for Human Development in Philadelphia. Was replaced about 5 years ago by an electronic currency.

These are color printed on slick paper.

$1 note features Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995); $5, $10 feature African American educator Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954)

Image on reverse is the Falls Bridge spanning Schuylkill River, connecting East & West River Drives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1894-95), George S. Webster, chief engineer, City of Philadelphia and James H. Windrim, director of Public Works

To read the complete lot description, see:
EQUAL DOLLARS / Philadelphia Alternative Community Currency / Set 1, 5, 10 (https://www.ebay.com/itm/174551545413)

On the first Monday of July, the Equal Dollars Food Market looks much the same as it always has since its founding several years back. A group of people with full tote bags of produce mill about just outside the entrance to the market, which is located inside the Germantown headquarters of Resources for Human Development, the nonprofit that brought the alternative currency into being in 1996. A mix of grocery items—club sodas, lettuce, bread, tomatoes the size of softballs—are being sold, each for just one dollar, with one caveat: Equal Dollars are no longer accepted, which means all customers must pay in U.S. dollars instead.

The reason is that in February notes of Equal Dollars stopped being issued to the roughly 5,000 people who were part of the community currency's membership network in the Greater Philadelphia area.

For 19 years, members of the network exchanged goods, services, and their labor for compensation in Equal Dollars; people who volunteered one to four hours of their time at the Food Market, for instance, would earn 25 Equal Dollars.

The currency itself was the brainchild of Bob Fishman, founder of RHD who stepped down as the nonprofit's CEO last fall. Ten U.S. dollars bought membership to the network and a starting sum of 50 Equal Dollars. As a non-interest bearing currency, RHD's thinking was that Equal Dollars could properly remunerate folks who cleaned streets and vacant lots, helped neighbors by running errands for them, gave tutoring lessons, as well as for a host of other services or goods—like refurbished bikes—that require more sweat equity than anything else.

To read the complete article, see:
Equal Dollars Alternative Currency Out of Circulation After 19 Years Due to High Costs (https://generocity.org/philly/2014/07/14/equal-dollars-alternative-currency-out-of-circulation-after-19-years/)

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