Bernard Lietaer - The Future of Money - Full Book

positive for their community, which brings us to the next key ingredient.

QUALITY OF LOCAL LEADERSHIP Perhaps the most important factor to start a local currency is local leadership. Someone, or some group, is needed with the combination of n, entrepreneurial capability and charisma. Vision to see that another is possible, and to adapt whatever model is used to local circumstances. Entrepreneurial capability to decide to do something about the situation, be effective at it. And finally, charisma to convince your community to follow you. If one of these three leadership characteristics is missing, it ends up as either 'just talk' or a failed project, of which there are many. However, when these three capabilities are gathered in one team, they can generate credibility that is crucial for a successful complementary currency Remember, money ultimately is about trust, and thus about the trustworthiness of the people who will be promoting the system. It will also automatically determine the scale and nature of the project that becomes possible. If the leadership has credibility only within a small area of town, work at that scale. If it has the capacity to mobilise a whole region complementary currency system of the size of the region becomes possible.

To conclude with this aspect, Lao-Tzu's comment is particularly n for grass-root movements: 'The best leadership is when at the end people claim they did it themselves.'

VALID COMPLEMENTARY CURRENCIES DESIGN The last critical step is to choose among- the wide variety of complementary currency systems that are available as prototypes today, the one that best fit: your own requirements. The following