A turnover in responsibilities

20 January 2011 L'équipe TAOA

The coordinator, a key-actor

Inside a barter club, there is always the same key-actor : the coordinator who passes on values, implements and enforces the rules, and is the leader of the club.

The values of a club are the true spirit of the club. Bartering is a tool that is part of the social economic logic, solidarity-based with fair-trade, cooperatives, microcredit; bartering is not an end in itself. The coordinator lives according to his values, he must be well-trained to transmit them.

The coordinator is the driving force in supply and demand. He supplies ideas, products if needed (sugar, flour) to enable the members to get the ingredients necessary for their production and consumption ( prosumers)

He boosts the members’ creativity, helps them to regain confidence in their ability to produce.

Above all the coordinator is responsible for control. He collects duties, controls hygiene, prices. But he has not always the means to do it, or the will to. He guarantees the continuity of a club or on the contrary its decline. He gathers many powers: controls, decisions, and also forwarding information.

Struggling against the excesses of the concentration of powers

To avoid excesses, some networks have insisted on training, transmission of the values of the ESS (RTS network), on the capacity of transmitting the basis of the paradigm of plenty.

But the most efficient tool is the role-turnover, you are elected for two terms of office. Everybody must be committed and must get the opportunity to be involved. Even if the coordinator respects all the rules, the nodo is based on his commitment and may collapse if the role was only one person’s.

Other networks have tried to stop the excesses by a reciprocal control of the various clubs of a same network, through an organization like a political party, or even like a firm; a controlled organization, on a hierarchical basis in each club, each zone, region and then network.

The coordinator is the key-actor in every barter club, he is the driving force of the club and is concerned by its values. His work and his commitment enabled the movement to become so important. Yet, the concentration of his rights and duties incited some clubs to fight against the excesses of his omnipotence via training, via a reciprocal control of the clubs but mainly to set up rules necessary to insure the regular turnover of roles to prevent power centralization.

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