A new model of social and economic development driven by knowledge, and supported by the work of people and entities dedicated to transmitting their skills and knowledge to the community. This is one of the keys of the international tgl project (acronym for teaching, giving, learning; in Spanish: teaching, giving, learning), which these days is taking its first steps in Spain.
tgl is an online tool that facilitates the development of local economies through a virtual town format. tgl is also the place where teaching, giving, undertaking and learning generate a new banking and commerce system, founded on a social network.
To stimulate economic activity, tgl has its own complementary currency, L. Its equivalence is one euro equal to one L, but you cannot exchange euros for Ls, nor on the contrary. Unlike conventional money, which is created by banks in the form of debt (loans) that must be repaid, the Ls should not be returned to the L-Bank, the tgl citizen bank. It is a debt free and interest free money, whose objective is to stimulate teaching, learning, volunteering and social entrepreneurship.
Among all these ways of generating Ls, this time we will focus on what is related to the dissemination of knowledge. We know that capitalism discards the skills and knowledge of many people who do not count for this productive system, despite how much they can contribute to society.
In tgl we bet, however, for the development of all the talents of citizenship. If you have something to teach, we help you to organize courses and you can also obtain an economic performance of this teaching work. And if you want to learn, you will also be rewarded for it.
We speak therefore of a topic of special interest to all people and entities dedicated to training, understood in tgl as something that goes far beyond academic training, and that includes learning any subject in which we are interested and that can contribute to our empowerment and our personal development.
This broad definition encompasses both academies and conventional training centers (we always talk about local businesses, because multinationals cannot participate in tgl) as well as private teachers, through associations and individuals dedicated to teaching knowledge that does not We learn in school (permaculture, medicine and alternative therapies, bio-construction, etc.). All these people and entities dedicated to training become tgl in knowledge generating agents. Knowledge that stands on the basis of social and economic progress of the community.
These knowledge generators go through an extremely complicated situation due to the economic crisis. Crisis that causes that it is not easy, for example for a neighborhood academy, to get students, despite the fact that many people would like to be trained to increase their employability.
The cause is precisely the low liquidity of these people without work. In fact, the lower amount of family income has turned many of the activities related to learning into a luxury, further aggravated by the raising of taxes such as VAT. To all this we must add the tough competition that a neighborhood academy has to face by, for example, multinationals dedicated to training.
In this context, tgl can be of great help to an academy, training center, association or tutor, when it comes to attracting new students. First, because it allows students to reimburse the cost in euros of the course in Ls. In fact, in tgl not only the teacher is paid in Ls for teaching, but also the student for learning. Those students can later use for other expenses of daily life, in any store or establishment that participates in tgl.
In this way, tgl is firmly committed to the training of people with fewer resources. It does so through its own currency, which allows to reduce the price of courses for students, since they can be reimbursed for the cost of them in Ls. At the same time, the social currency provides economic resources to those who decide to increase their knowledge and skills.
For their part, knowledge generators also have the possibility of reducing, if they wish, the cost of their courses in euros. A reduction that will be compensated by the Ls they get for teaching. Ls that any entity dedicated to training can use as incentives for its own professors or employees, or to pay suppliers (agency, printing, stationery, etc.) provided they are members of tgl.
Partners that will increase, since the participation of entities dedicated to training in tgl, where they become knowledge generators for the community, contributes to the strengthening of a neighborhood or town identity that reinforces the links between neighbors, shops and the academies and professors themselves.
On the other hand, tgl is an interesting advertising showcase for knowledge generators. Any tgl partner will have access, through the software tool, to the entities and individuals that offer training courses within the community. Since tgl is a system that is based on knowledge as an engine of development, it is clear that most partners will have a special interest in learning. It is, therefore, an effective way to reach the demanding public directly of such offers.
A concrete example
The Exchanger is the name of the tgl software section dedicated to training. In it you can find the courses offered by any of the knowledge generators in the community. What steps must be followed for this? Let's look at a specific example. It has been extracted from the tgl blog: “a person with the ability to teach something (almost everyone can have this capacity or develop it) or an organization that already offers courses (eg any academy) decides to offer a course through s of tgl. Plan the course, the contents, the number of students and the total hours over a period of three months. Then follow the process marked in the Exchanger-Courses to request Ls from the L-Bank; next, the Ls are created, which could be called appears in your teacher account at the L-Bank. The teacher will use these Ls to pay the students of his course and also to pay Ls himself (for the moment, a standard amount of 5L per hour has been set for teachers and students).
The person or academy that teaches the course must decide whether to maintain the same price of the course that was already charged in euros or if it reduces the price in euros as an additional incentive for students.
Therefore, the initial steps in your neighborhood or town include explaining to people who already teach that they can become members of tgl and start paying their students in Ls; In this way, we started to create Ls and there are people in the area with Ls to spend. As an example, in Las Rozas (Madrid), the owner of a pizzeria that teaches people who want to learn to make bread on Mondays has already promised to start paying students Ls; it happens that, in parallel, it is possible that in the pizzerias they begin to accept Ls in partial payment of their pizzas.
Period of lack
In tgl all services are free, except those that generate income in euros to the member, as is the case of the courses dynamized through the Exchanger. For these services you have to pay a fee, which is currently being calculated, but which is expected to be between 10 and 15 euros per month. However, there is an initial period of lack of payment for any new partner that also applies to knowledge generators. In this way, the first three / six months will be free of charge for academies, training centers, teachers, associations, etc.
In the case of students, they will not have to pay any kind of fee at any time. The rate only applies to those who earn euros with tgl services. In this specific case of training, only knowledge-generating agents pay it.
It should be borne in mind that the monthly rate that will be applied after the deficiency will be much lower than the benefit that a knowledge generating agent will obtain through the registration of Students for their courses. To this we must add the advantage of tgl as an advertising showcase that allows you to contact a public that demands these courses.
The fee paid to tgl will be used to pay for the administration and moderation of the local node. The amount that after completing this objective will go to a community fund to stimulate new projects in the local environment.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
The objective of tgl Spain is to support the creation of local nodes that develop this project in neighborhoods and municipalities. To this end, its driving group is open to explain this initiative in greater depth, and even to organize meetings, with people interested in creating a TGL community in their environment. Those who want to know more about tgl should explore the website http://www.tgl.tv, register and create their partner profile. You can also write to the contact email and visit the blog. Other ways of contact are your Facebook and your Twitter.
tgl: training as the engine of society
