Economic globalisation, love it or hate it. For most of us it means conforming to a financial system we have less and less reason to trust. Witness the riots outside banks in Buenos Aires and the pensions crisis in rich countries. Today our programme, 'Cash No Questions', brings you stories of people who've decided not to conform - people who prefer to put their trust in the community rather than bankers and stockbrokers.

Hour Town

Ithaca is a small city set in the Catskill Mountains five hours drive from New York City. It's home to Cornell, one of America's oldest and most prestigious universities. The economic recession of the early nineties threatened small businesses already vulnerable to competition from big corporations and giant nationwide retailers, but Ithaca fought back, launching an alternative currency designed to build community and help the town's residents spend their money locally.

Traditionally Ithaca has also been the source of alternative ideas so it was an ideal place to set up an alternative currency. Without enough dollars to go around, they decided to make their own, called Ithaca Hours. It's all based on time, one hour being worth 10 dollars. The bank is in a used bookstore in the centre of the city.

Stephen Burke of Ithaca Hours explains the system. "People join the system by paying a membership fee which is $5, and for that they get a disbursement of two Ithaca hours, which are worth $20 American, so right away it's a good deal and very enticing, and that's the way that we disburse the currency throughout the community, and it's the way that we enlist businesses. And it's not just for established businesses, it's also for people who moonlight, you know like maybe they do editing or maybe they do computer repair, things like that, in their spare time."

One of the successes of Ithaca hours is the directory in which businesses can advertise, and the community can search for goods and services, sure of spending their hours or dollars locally. It's become the local equivalent of the yellow pages. An ever-increasing number of outlets in Ithaca accept hours as full or part payment, including a bagel shop and organic supermarkets. Some shops not only accept hours for goods but also pay part of their staff's wages in hours. Even the local credit union accepts Ithaca hours as partial payment for loans and mortgage applications.

Jean McPheeters of the local Chamber of Commerce explains the importance of the system. "It assigns an economic value to services that probably used to be just exchanged informally among people, and it broadens community by extending that kind of informal service to a much larger community."

Like any central bank, Ithaca hours also offers loans and grants to the community. The system was born in Ithaca's alternative community but is now edging into the mainstream. Its membership stands at around 800 but there are many more using the currency who haven't become members.

All in all, it's a great way to keep the fruits of local efforts recycling through the community. Stephen Burke says "people carry this local money in their wallet so it gives them that reminder every day you know, to go out and to support their neighbours who are working here, who live here, who stay here."

Divine Inspiration

Mexico City, a vast sprawl of neighbourhoods of more than 20 million people, that's grown relentlessly through decades of Mexico's economic instability. For the past 10 years, an alternative currency called the Tlaloc has been circulating, creating a network of small enterprises, and redefining the city's economy.

Banks have had control of the money system, making interest income when people exchange goods and services. Tlaloc, the Aztec god of water and life, was chosen as the symbol of a novel solution to these problems - creating a new marketplace for small businesses. The Tlaloc system creates value for activities that conventionally aren't valued.

Just like Ithaca hours, each Tlaloc is worth one hour. Luis Lopezzelera Mendez of Tlaloc explains a transaction. "The debtor receives something, and the creditor is giving something. In this moment the two signatories have created a value. In this case, half an hour because it’s half a Tlaloc, and then on the back, every signatory represents a transaction, so this will, without any cost, only the cost of the paper, of printing the paper, has created ten times the value."

"We are trying to learn how to value the social relations among ourselves, and the social relations with the earth, with the environment. It’s part of the economy, the real economy, but the economists forget that."

The Tlaloc organisation promotes fair trade and environmentally aware production methods and tries to rebuild links between the city and the countryside. Products sold are nationally made. Every week the system's members meet to introduce new members and discuss ways to take advantage of market opportunities. A quarterly magazine tells about local initiatives and encourages linkages among people.

Jorge Eduardo Perez Arista, a Tlaloc participant, summarises the system's attraction. "What the Tlaloc does is to permit exchange. It gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we can get a credit, a moral credit not a bank credit."

Greenwich Means Time

A sultry summer morning on dress-down Friday. London's City dealers scurry towards their trading desks. Richard Gardner is a broker with a special London bank. His commodity is not dollars and pounds, platinum or gold. He deals in a precious but very different resource - time.

The borough of Greenwich is geographically located on the Meridian line. It's also famous as the world's timekeeper. Appropriately, Richard's bank is called a time bank, and his trading desk is in a community centre.

As part of his job, Richard is accompanying a new recruit from his time bank, Ginny Stokes, to meet Pauline Webb. Pauline suffers from arthritis and osteoporosis, and can't handle her heavy shopping load. This shopping trip will earn Ginny an hour and a half of time towards her new time bank account. Conversely, Pauline will have an hour and a half deducted from hers.

Time banks have been operating in London for two years, and there are now 17 in the city. In a nutshell, one hour of a person's time can be exchanged for one hour of another's. Everyone's time is worth the same, irrespective of their ability, skill or age.

Driver Rahim Ismet is another time bank member earning points. He joined the time bank to occupy himself while recovering from illness. By driving and gardening, he's clocked up over 200 hours, but for the system to work, he must spend them. And Pauline may well be the person to teach him - she gained computer skills through the time bank and is now ready to share them.

A well organised system is necessary to keep track of all the time units earned and spent. Richard's computer records the names of all members, the skills they have to offer and what they need help with. Every time bank in the country uses the same software system developed by Edgar Cahn. It's a program spreading quickly around the world. There are approximately 1,000 time banks around the world in the USA, UK, Japan, China, Argentina, and the Pacific Islands.

So how do you join a time bank? In Greenwich, it's a matter of building up trust and most people sign up by word of mouth. As the scheme grows, the services available will cover everything imaginable.

For Pauline, it's all about making people feel useful. "What I really like about it is everybody is valued the same, which really made me join, because of making you feel worthwhile. I mean everybody can do something."

East Goes West

Since the fall of communism, Poland has been a country in transition. With the closure of state-owned enterprises and rural co-operatives, a highly educated work force of transitional poor have turned to small business. But how do you raise money without collateral?

Fundusz Mikro is a non-governmental organisation that provides permanent access to capital for Poland's one million microentrepreneurs - people who wouldn't normally qualify for a bank loan. It's based on a system in Bangladesh, adapted to meet microenterprise market in Poland and surrounding regions.

The organisation deals with 30,000 microbusiness owners from 30 cities around the country, disbursing over $100 million in loans. It's designed to be efficient and user friendly. The forms are kept to a minimum, as Agnieska Czarnomska explains. "Of course the name, and then something about education, experience, using borrowed money or credit, and then what is he going to do with the loan, and what will be the result of the loan. And that’s all. It takes ten days for Fundusz Mikro to make a decision, I mean starting with this loan application, to the entrepreneur has money on his banking account."

It seems like a big risk but the criteria for granting loans are based on the commitment of the client to repay the loan, as well as their cashflow. "The major difference is that these people, microenterprise are not partners for banks because they have no credit history, typically, or they lack collateral. Fundusz Mikro offers services which are based on the motivation of the clients to pay back." says Grzegorz Galusek of the Microfinance Centre of Central and Eastern Europe.

Andrzei Kseizak is a local sock producer who began with a 6,000 zloty loan that he's repaid. Some of it was for working capital but he was also able to renovate his factory as well as buy more machines and a computer. He's now on his seventh loan, a total of 42,000 zlotys.

Malgorizata Machowiak has had two loans to upkeep her beauty parlour. For her, the relationship with Fundusz Mikro is more than financial. "I came to Fundusz Mikro as a simple client, just to borrow the money, but starting from that moment I felt more and more in partnership with them, and this is how I feel now. We often meet and we talk a lot about my business, and I find it really helpful."

But are there any drawbacks? Of course, as with any loan scheme, the borrower must pay back. But Grzegorz thinks the system is valuable. "The Mikro Fundusz is a very important development tool. It provides people with capital but also helps them recognise their talents, their entrepreneurship, and helps them live in dignity."

Street Savers

Mumbai, also Bombay, Bollywood and India’s financial capital, is home to several generations of migrants who’ve come here in search of work and livelihood. More than half of them live in slums, and the poorest in shacks along the pavements. Yet out of the shacks has come a movement that uses the collective power of a savings scheme to help those with no rights to leave the streets and secure safe homes for them and their families.

Key to the shack-dwellers’ success is a savings process embracing thousands across Mumbai. Three organisations have brought the shack-dwellers together – the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation (NSDF), and Mahila Milan, or Hindi for 'Women Together'.

Laxmi Naidu and Mosteri Gosmahommed are just two of the women who’ve been collecting rupees and people for nearly 20 years. When Laxmi first arrived, she lived under daily threat from the authorities, until a landmark court ruling in 1985. At first the municipality used to come in and break the homes but after joining Mahila Milan and winning the case, they have been able to build more secure homes. Thanks to this ruling, people saw the power of joint action, and women who wouldn’t usually part with their emergency cash, gained confidence.

Every day, Laxmi collects from up to 70 families living in the streets of her neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter how little or how much. What’s important is that something is put aside. She explains the difference between this and a regular savings scheme. "It’s not replacing a bank. It’s not a middle class approach, where out of your salary you put some money aside and saving – no. Every day save not from your income. From your daily expenditure."

Laxmi collects for two savings schemes, a daily collection for emergencies that can be drawn at any time, and a monthly one reserved for new housing. Each householder aims to save 25,000 Rupees - $548. No mean feat for people earning so little.

In the beginning, they were refused land for housing as the government thought it would simply be re-sold. The women suggested the government contributing matching funds if the women could come up with 50 rupees a month from their own resources. This was the start of the savings. Laxmi and those in the five settlements who helped found Mahila Milan, now have a plot of land to build their own houses, almost a decade after they first got organised. But meanwhile, their strategy has also helped others.

Savings have brought thousands of families into the federation, and through collective negotiation, over 15,000 households now have secure housing. Nasim Sayed is one of those relocated as the railway reclaimed its land. She says at first they were looked down on by the neighbours, but gained respect once they all got to know one another.

The street savers model has been so successful it’s been adopted in 50 other cities across India. It's helping women create a better life for themselves and their families.

Jockin of the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation states it clearly. "If you want to have a quality and quantity change in any situation, it is the women can bring. You are providing a new system in which you know how to manage your own money, then you know how to manage your community, then you know how to manage your husband, how to manage your children, how to manage your environment, how to manage your own locality as a collective."