Get connected with a vast variety of free services provided by community members, post requests for assistance and offer assistance by signing up for the Portland Collaborative Exchange Network HERE.

Dear supporters we are happy to announce a new Symbiosis PDX program called the Portland Collaborative Exchange Network. This program is another way to develop deeper mutual aid bonds in our community. Here at Symbiosis we believe in solidarity not charity. That means that we work against the one way interactions that send the message that those recieving/asking for help don't have anything to contribute to community and that those who are providing, don't themselves have any needs that community can meet and help with; therefore, we would like to invite all of you to join the Portland Collaborative Exchange Network.

The Portland Collaborative Exchange Network (PCEN) is a mutual support network of people engaged in reciprocal exchange of services, skills, and goods through a timebank where the currency is an hour of time for everyone. It is a project of Symbiosis PDX, although other organizations are encouraged to partner with us and join.

Through membership in PCEN people: create and strengthen community bonds, create economic freedom by providing an alternative means to get needs and desires met, and encourage creativity in redefining self-sufficiency, interdependence and valuation of time. 

PCEN introduces a paradigm where members reflect on the available resources in their lives moving from a perception of scarcity and lack to abundance and wholeness.

Our guiding vision is to make social infrastructure visible within our communities. Social infrastructure describes the invisible bonds and relationships which constitute a generative capital that can be accumulated and circulated through timebanking. 

Our mission is to promote and sustain a robust timebanking infrastructure which supports non-monetary transactions amongst individuals and organizations allowing a greater sum of the realized value of work to be retained and shared within local communities. 

We are particularly focused on partnering with organizations which have a broad base of stakeholders whom might benefit from deploying timebanking as a method for capturing and compensating work that presently lives in the form of reciprocal goodwill transactions and creating an infrastructure where the time given over to these worthy causes may be traded with other members within the timebank for services those members have offered. 

Our goal is to develop and sustain a complementary community currency which decreases financial pressure, reinforces the fabric of trust and creates new opportunities for engagement between stakeholders within our communities.