Since January 2014, members have exchanged over two million Hudson Valley Currents, with over 500 members rapidly signed up at the start. Currents can easily be exchanged for wellness services, design, clothing, food and a wide range of practical arts. Ever since the beginning, director Chris Hewitt and his board have been thinking of creative ways to keep the Current flowing.
The latest innovation, Current Cohorts, will utilize an advantage that both built and builds on that success—our rich and diverse landscape of entrepreneurs who care deeply for the local economy and its power to lift all boats—by gathering Current users four times a year as localized cohorts, small groups who can share experiences and brainstorm new ideas.
“The idea is to create local affinity groups who can easily gather and connect around their unique needs and offerings, strengthening their connections and identifying potential exchanges,” says Hewitt. “We can then publicize new uses for the Current and draw in more of the membership, both existing and new.”
The first cohorts to launch will focus on Kingston and on the Rondout Valley, two areas with robust member bases offering everything from food and photography to compost, kids’ entertainment and popcorn. Shaniqua Bowden, who alongside multiple entrepreneurial ventures is the Director of Cultural Engagement and Sustainable Living for the Kingston Land Trust, says having a variety of ways of exchanging goods and services is already one of the joys of working in the Kingston landscape.
“Having multiple means of exchange helps us build a more personable and trusting community, helping us support each other’s work in multiple ways,” she says. “It’s building the network. There’s so much richness and vitality in this part of the world, and right now it feels contagious, which is awesome.”
The Land Trust staff operates with a shared leadership model that Bowden says works better than a top-down hierarchy; Bowden believes that if more organizations experienced how well that can work, they’d recognize its practical value. “Shared leadership is a model that isn’t often taught,” she says. “Most of this society is based on hierarchical models, but shared leadership works better when the goal is supporting and aiding one another in a more communal way. We learn together and draw others in, and everyone wins.” Among other endeavors, the Land Trust stewards public green spaces and invites one and all to help maintain and enjoy them, often on the same hike at a spot like the Red Fox ravine.
Bowden sees major benefits in the cohort concept of gathering in small groups to cross-pollinate each other’s creative ideas and services. “It’s always better when information is flowing more, being shared,” she says. “We’re all here to do good work for the community, and orchestrate benefits for everyone. Working across organizations that share that goal and have different ways of getting there, different offerings, is exponentially more powerful than any one organization operating alone. If I’m working in land use, and someone else is working on housing or agriculture, there are vast benefits to getting together and looking at ways we can serve the community. Being a close-knit community where we can potentially share funding sources and labor pools to get things done and having multiple ways of exchange, instead of each organization having to reinvent everything from the ground up or duplicating each other. We are absolutely stronger together