An Exercise in Empathy
Understanding the richness we find in diversity allows us to see the value of belonging to a community. That’s what Acumen Fellows discover as part of the Fellowship Program.
(Original text by Laura Victoria Polanco)
Is solidarity the new currency? Long before the conquest of Colombia, indigenous communities practiced bartering (or ‘trueque,’ as it’s known in South America). This economic model allowed people to exchange fish for corn, salt for gold, and thus benefit from each other with products that would otherwise be unavailable. Over time, and with the arrival of the currency, this system changed. Nonetheless, the spirit of exchange for the benefit of community remained.
In today’s market of supply and demand — in which access to certain goods and services can be limited for some players — there are communities betting on exchanging in a different way. As our manifesto says: “[We] make capital work for us, not control us.” This is precisely what the community of Acumen Fellows in Colombia created with LukAcumen: a tool that allows them to put resources at the service of others, and where shared knowledge and experiences are prioritized over money.
What is LukAcumen?
It all started when the 2019 Colombia Fellows noticed the potential among those who make up their cohort: agricultural producers, founders of organizations, and musicians, to name a few. They realized that together, they could likely solve each other’s needs without needing to look any further.
“We realized that the people who were part of this community had enormous potential based on our different knowledge, services we could offer, and experiences we could share. At the same time, we realized that paying for those services with hard currency would likely not suit us all. It was also very difficult to put a monetary value on one another’s knowledge, products, and services. So we came up with the idea of mapping our skill sets and from there we created a system that would allow us to acquire each other’s services or products,” explains 2019 Colombia Fellow Adela Andrea González Pacheco.
But how would they generate the exchange? Inspired by other models in different parts of the world such as Mexico and Spain, they believed that a social currency could make this sharing of skill sets possible.
A social currency is a tool created and used by communities to facilitate the exchange of products, services, and knowledge. In other words, it helps communities reach an agreement to use something as a means of exchange. For the Colombia Acumen Fellows, this new exchange tool became known as LukAcumen.
LukAcumen is a simple way of exchanging favors. Each person in the community has the same amount of Lukas (official currency of LukAcumen) and when a favor becomes available, the person who receives that product or service reimburses the person who offered it using Lukas. The simple exchange takes place by completing a form online.
2019 Colombia Fellow Felipe Orduz describes it as “a tool that promotes solidarity, not only with the 2019 cohort but also with the 2020 and future cohorts. […] Being part of the program and coinciding with such diverse perspectives gives us many opportunities for connection and synergy that were not always taken advantage of. We decided to leverage this talent and diversity.”
Like all good ideas, there are challenges to overcome
LukAcumen is the first attempt by the Fellows community to collaborate with each other more broadly on such a system. So far in this growing group of over 50 social innovators, close to 130 transactions have taken place across Colombia, including in: Bogotá, Cali, Quibdó and Barranquilla, to name a few. Nonetheless, the very diversity that makes the Fellows community so rich is what often hinders its use. The lack of connectivity, and the time and team required to make it work, are only a few of the challenges they face.
“[One of] the main reasons why a social currency fails is because it’s complex to use, so you simply opt to use money,” explains 2019 Colombia Fellow Facundo Rinaudo.
Without ignoring these challenges, and by having identified where they want to go, these social innovators continue joining forces to understand how, hand in hand, they can generate greater impact.
“It has been very useful so that, as a community, we can work together. We can get to know each other better and have a real activity with active impact and meaningful interactions,” says 2020 Colombia Fellow Andrea Escobar.
We could say that what LukAcumen is today is not far from what indigenous communities did hundreds of years ago, benefiting from one another and exchanging knowledge. LukAcumen, and its social currency platform, is an exercise in empathy: learning how to support one another through different needs and challenges. At the same time, it’s an example of solidarity in action, opening new doors for more people to lead change.
