The lock for the door is not yet in place, nor has the new carpet been installed. But the tiny room on the third floor of an old stone building on the grounds of the Phoenixville Hospital will soon be home to a group with a big mission.
For the first time, volunteers with the nonprofit Phoenixville Area Time Bank will have their own office. They’ll rent the space for $1 a month from the hospital and share a common area with other nonprofits from the area.
“This is huge for us,” said Diana Baldi, the group’s president. The move from the home of a volunteer to a public space will raise the group’s visibility in the community and improve accessibility to all. The group plans to open in late February.
A time bank, for the uninitiated, is an organization whose volunteers can both “deposit” their own time to others’ tasks or projects and, when they themselves need assistance, “withdraw” the time of others.
The Phoenixville Area Time Bank, one of several in the region, is celebrating its 16th year. In 2004, seven organizers and a part-time paid coordinator launched the group, known then as the Valley Forge Time Bank. They were inspired by TimeBankUSA founder Edgar Cahn, who created the organization as a way to recognize that everyone has value, to foster stronger communities, and to reward civic engagement through a pay-it-forward approach to volunteerism.
More than 80 Time Banks in are registered in the United States, including nine in Pennsylvania and three in New Jersey. Six other countries — Australia, Canada, France, Guatemala, New Zealand, and South Korea — also have time banks, though not all of the groups are active and some only have a few members.
