Economics & Livelihood

Life in Village Culture: A Tradition of Connecting and Collaborating in a Sharing Economy

by Ross Moster

Village Vancouver embodies the principles and actions of a dynamic cooperative, creative sharing economy within a celebratory culture of connecting and collaborating. All of our activities contribute to creating more vibrant and resilient sharing communities. Examples include our seed libraries, where folks can get free seeds for their gardens, or swap or donate seeds, and garden projects at schools and elsewhere can get seeds donated, and the Kits Village Collaborative Garden, which over 300 people enjoyed food from at one time or another last year at potlucks, dinner groups, harvest festivals, drop-in spaghetti nights, meetings, and other gatherings.

Other examples include our buy, sell, share, find page, monthly potlucks at neighbourhood villages, Neighbour Savour, our community-wide zero waste gathering for 300 folks (now including a pay-it-forward gift exchange), Swap Till You Drop (upcoming swap meet), community centred emergency preparedness, Right Livelihood Circles, a collaborative recycling depot and repurposing of materials,  highlighting cooperative and social enterprises, laying the groundwork for community currency in Vancouver, partnering on local and sharing economy events and presentations, Transition workshops, Ecological Economics courses, and dozens and dozens of collaborations with other groups, as well as with universities, festivals, community centres, neighbourhood houses, and 100 in 1 Day.

Our Demo Sustainable Neighbourhood Village offers free space to community groups on Car Free Days. Members share tools - for example, the KVCG wheelbarrow - knowledge, information, and other assets. At Permaculture Blitzes, up to 25 at a time collaborative to create more regenerative spaces for growing food. Dinner groups and spaghetti nights feed several folks from one stove and oven - rather than many households each cooking their own meal on their own stove/oven - and demonstrate how we can create mini-food cycles and very local food economies in our neighbourhoods and have lots of fun in the process.

Collaborative gardens and garden space allow neighbours to learn from one another and share both the workload and harvest. Placemaking activities (including VV's 2014 City Commons Placemaking course) offer further opportunities to collaborate on neighbourhoood projects. Shared leadership allows us to enjoy the benefits of collective wisdom, community members collaborate on numerous small grant projects, and thousands of members throughout the city allow for lots of more informal sharing.

Past Groups and Projects: 

Click here for Ecological and New Economics Group

Click here for Local Economy Group

Click here for Local Currency - Open Money - The Dunbar Dollar Project

Click here for Right Livelihood Circles

Click here for Transition Town Trades Initiative

Click here for Buy/Sell/Share/Find