BerkShares Local Currency Model Brings Business Back to the Community

Just ten weeks after BerkShares made their debut on the streets and in the cash registers of southern Berkshire County, Massachusetts, trade in this model local currency has been brisk. BerkShares Inc., the organization sponsoring the project, estimates that 333,000 BerkShares have already been purchased from the four participating banks. Much of that has already gone into the hands of the 188 participating local merchants and service providers, who, in turn, have spent the currency at other participating local businesses.

BerkShares are issued in five denominations: 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, and 50s. They are beautifully produced bills that celebrate local heroes, landscapes, and the work of local artists. They are designed by John Isaacs of John Isaacs Design and printed at Excelsior Printing using special security paper from Crane and Co.—all businesses located in the Berkshire region.

But BerkShares are even more powerful than they are beautiful. Every BerkShare spent helps keep community assets from leaving the Berkshires for far-off places. Every BerkShare spent means more money in the hands of Berkshire businesses. And as the BerkShares keep circulating, the effect is cumulative.

An estimated 3,000 people have been using BerkShares on a regular basis for food, movie tickets, clothing, books, music, and a variety of services from legal advice to landscaping, from car repair to carpentry. The BerkShares project has given them a powerful impetus to shop locally whenever possible.

In an age of global commerce and internet shopping, BerkShares Inc. has found a powerful way to strengthen the local economy of its home region. It has reformed the way many Berkshire business owners and residents of the think about their local economy. It has helped educate the Berkshire community on why shopping locally matters. And, most importantly, it has set in motion a revolution that can make the Berkshires not only a beautiful and wholesome place to live, but one where locally owned businesses thrive, and where economic self-sufficiency can be nurtured as an alternate model to the nameless, faceless global economy.

BerkShares Inc. is cosponsored by the E. F. Schumacher Society and the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce. For more information, please call 413/528-1737, or visit www.berkshares.org.

A gallery of photographs by Berkshire photographer Jason Houston, documenting the history of BerkShares, can also be viewed at the BerkShares website.