My experience with the Gift Economy began many years ago, when I experienced a small circular economy group, created by some Italian and Spanish women.

It was the first time I heard about a different way of sharing money, using it to really for enhancing people’s projects and visions.

AWARENESS ABOUT MONEY

Today’s use of money (and not money itself – be careful), belongs to the way in which humanity is held hostage within a society that extinguishes passions, mortifies the search for quality through a deep and cultural motivation, selects people based on meritocracy, promotes individualism and competition, extinguishes vitality and creativity.

Money itself is not the cause: money is a useful tool, it is a unit of measurement invented to assist exchanges. The problem is how it is used and exploited.

Within a gift economy all this appears clear in front of your eyes our eyes.

When money is accumulated and given to third parties, who use it without saying what they do with it, it turns against us, creating societies in which a few people (those who receive our money and use it) control the many.

BANKING SYSTEM

In banking systems, and in general in all lending systems, this is exactly what happens: a few people legally collect the money of many people, and then use it to make interests of others, outside the community, investing it in projects for which those who gave the money are not even informed or interested.

When people ask me: “But how is it possible that there are still wars nowadays?”, the answer is simple: “Because we are still putting money in non-transparent and non-ethical banks, which favor interests of a few people, and do not consider the needs of the many, and therefore we allow money to be used to finance wars, produce weapons, move armies”. And what’s more, we also pay the interests with our many years of work, for having received money on loan.

THIS CURRENT MODEL OF SOCIETY, BASED ON RESIGNATION OF PEOPLE AND LACK OF ABUNDANCE IS GOING TO FINISH SOON, BECAUSE MOST OF THE PEOPLE ARE NOT HAPPY. Actually it is already finishing. 

Money is like water, it is used in a healthy way when it flows through everyone’s hands and into everyone’s homes, without stopping, in continuous movement. Flowing brings life, oxygen, energy to everyone’s dreams and projects.

Next question: “But what can we do in this situation? Since the system is too large and well structured, I alone can’t do anything to change this condition”.

Not at all! You can do something concrete and extremely impactful: you can enter a Gift Economy.

NOTHING NEW, LET’S GO BACK TO THE OLD AND IT WILL BE PROGRESS

When I told my partner that I was part of a Gift Economy, he wasn’t surprised at all, in fact he told me: “Well, we in Pakistan have been doing it since we were kids, I bought my car this way” .

It’s exactly like this: the countries that are still freer, such as the valleys of Pakistan or the villages of Africa, continually use the gift economy, because it is logical.

We are human beings, we help each other directly. When someone is in difficulty and I can, I help them immediately.

In African villages, when a woman becomes a widow and is left alone with her children, all the villagers offer her a little financial help, so that she can support herself and carry out a small project, capable of supporting herself and her children, donating a peaceful future for them. Everyone puts in a small contribution, but there are many of us, so the result is great. Simple, right?

International volunteering often doesn’t work, because people aren’t reached directly, or again, in order to receive money, needy people are then channeled into obligatory paths, which alienate them from their culture of origin.