THE WORLD can learn from the Valleys when it comes to community time banks according to the founder of the concept Dr Edgar Cahn.

He started time banks in the US 20 years ago.

Essentially, they consist of offering your services to your community and "banking" the value of it, to be repaid by another worker with a different service.

So, for example, you could offer dog walking and be repaid with carpentry. Speaking at the University of Wales Newport, Dr Cahn said many new ideas were emerging from Wales.

He said: "We can learn so much from what you're develing. We've come to talk, but we've also come to listen and to get feedback from people who have done it already."

Dr Cahn praised the learning time banks being set up at Graig-y-Racca and Cwm and the health-based time bank in Tredegar.

He described the Time-Centre project in Blaengarw as "a world first". John Rogers, who works at the university's centre for community and lifelong learning, said: "It was a pleasure to welcome Dr Cahn who is a leading authority on ways of rewarding work to rebuild local communities.

"The aim of our time banks is to develop a community currency in the most disadvantaged communities in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Merthyr, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and Torfaen.

"This currency will value the time that people put into building and strengthening their local communities.

"The time banks focus on the skills that everyone has, from dog-walking and gardening to using a computer. It's an incentive: if you do something for your community, your community will do something for you."

Dr Cahn has had a distinguished career in the American civil rights movement and in academic law faculties. As special counsel and speech writer for attorney general Robert Kennedy under President John Kennedy, he was assigned to the solicitor general's office to work on civil rights cases.

In 1980, he created Time Dollars, a local, tax-exempt currency designed to validate and reward the work of rebuilding communities.

His book, No More Throw-away People, exposes what he calls "the dark side" of the money market and redefines economics by treating households and communities as a separate economy.