The Volunteering Gardening Team wants to create an “Edible Davis” so more people are connected to their land, food, and community.  Although the gardening team is on a voluntary basis, some garden-recipients may be interested in trading the gardeners for services that they excel at such as baking, bike-repair etc. We hope to facilitate this exchange of services with Davis Dollars.

How does the Volunteer Gardening Team and Davis Dollars connect? Well, our plan is to give the community a gift of gardens as an example of a service that can be traded. For those that are interested, they can reciprocate by sharing one of their skills. For example, baking us cookies when we come to build their garden. If they are really interested, they can do a service for their neighbor, be paid in Davis Dollars, and then pay us. The emphasis, however, is that the Gardening Team is Volunteer and we do not expect anything in return.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me – davisdollarsgardens@gmail.com

For every business, we are willing to exchange the first 100 DDs from any business at a 1:1 ratio, meaning there is no risk whatsoever.

We are about to launch DDs soon, and we want the support of our local Businesses. We want to give businesses a chance to try accepting DDs without concern. Through this opportunity, you will be able to see the results of accepting DDs, and we hope you will choose to continue accepting DDs.

The idea of all 60,000 members of the Davis community all being highly involved in community related events or all knowing one another is impossible. However, to bring more of the community together and interacting amongst each other is possible and that is what Davis Dollars is about. Not only are we here to set up a place where people can trade goods and services, the interactions between members of society will build new friends, new bonds, and therefore a stronger Davis community. When people think of using money to trade goods and services they forget that they are ultimately helping one another. We see Davis Dollars as a way of life, helping one another, making good connections with new people of the community, and thereby sharing and experiencing the Davis community.

He ended up meeting a lot of people, and got some contracts that netted him $50,000 that year – more than he’d ever earned before, and a lot better than than $0. And I’d bet money that he felt a lot more connection to those contracts than to other contracts he may have gotten from craigslist during the same period. And guess what? You wouldn’t have to be unemployed to do this sort of thing.

This sort of hyper-local stuff is exactly what Davis Dollars is supposed to do! Davis Dollars should start up conversations between people. When I pick up or drop off freecycle items to people, I try to chat with them a bit. That sort of thing isn’t possible when you buy something from ebay or craigslist.

So let’s celebrate Mr. Morefield’s creativity, and let that be an inspiration for the rest of us to try to make more of the connections all around us.

Here’s the article: http://www.good.is/post/architecture-5-cents

Interestingly enough, the Davis Downtown Business Association, DDBA, has come up with a new way to raise consumer spirits by creating the Downtown Davis Gift Card, which in my opinion, is a great and easy gift for anyone in addition to promoting local spending. Similarly, Davis Dollars’ main objective is to also promote the Davis economy and strengthen the ties amongst the people of the community. Though in the case of Davis Dollars people are able to spend the community currency on goods and services that other community members are willing to provide for in addition to purchasing goods and services from participating businesses. Davis Dollars not only encourages people to spend locally, it also empowers individuals to share their skills.

A new Davis Dollars project for a future blog post: Sustainable Gardens in your own yard! No gardening required. All you have to do is pick the goodness right in your yard. This is absolutely exciting! Key in next time for updates on this awesome new project!

Check out the “Ten.”

For this week: the Five Davis Dollar!

You can also click the thumbnail image for a larger view.

We want the imagery on all the bills to celebrate Davis, so we’re focusing on things that people generally think of when they think of Davis.  We already have some ideas about what imagery we might use for the 10DD bill, but we want to hear your thoughts!  Let us know.  (If we have more than one idea we like, we may merge them, or may use the idea for the 20DD.)

In the meantime, here are the designs we have so far for our 5 Davis Dollar bill:

5DD Bill, front

I’ve spoken to a lot of people about Davis Dollars, and I’d like to continue the conversation.  That’s a big reason for the blog, the twitter account (@davisdollars), and the facebook page, as well as for my emails to the email list.

But I should ask all of you – what’s the best way to create a conversation?  How do you want to hear from Davis Dollars, and how do you want to contact us?  Do you want more blog posts?  More photos?  More tweets, or more emails?  Perhaps a wiki, or more pages available on our website?  Is there some other medium you’d like us to use?

Let me know and I’ll get on it.  I’m interested in hearing what you have to share.

Some Davis-centric symbol alongside the denomination of the bill

The main image will be a symbol or image of importance to Davis.  Among the images we’ve discussed are agricultural produce, bikes, double decker buses, horses, the Arboretum, the Farmers’ Market, and the distinctive Amtrak station.  (We’d love suggestions for other images we might use.)

Here’s a sketch of what the back might look like:

Davis symbol superimposed on a related scene (the farmer's market, here)

For each denomination (1DD, 5DD, 10DD and maybe 20DD) we’ll have another version of the front image on the left, superimposed on a related scene.

Let us know if you have any ideas you want to share with us as we finish designing the currency!