Join the Leith Lending Circle

At last weeks Scotgovcamp, there was a session on whether 'markets' could help to solve poverty, and we ended up talking about how people could help each other out by lending out their skills, underused stuff, or spaces - and what role technology could have in all this.

Well, this week, we just discovered Ecomodo.com and we think it's brilliant. You can lend your stuff, or your skills to people, or even a space like a room or a garden. The site uses Paypal - so if you have an account with Paypal - you can choose to lend your things for a fee, or you can donate that fee to a 'good cause' - or of course you can just lend for free. Or as they put it - you can consume less and live more!

So if you don't have a job, but you do have a huge toolkit - you could earn a bit of money by lending your tools out to people. You might also be able to swap your handyman skills with someone else too.

If you want to lend more pricey things but are concerned about getting it back, or getting it back damaged, then the site allows you to charge a depost as well as a rental - and they have a group insurance policy for items worth more than £50.

Lastly, it manages your personal contact details carefully too, so only people you lend to get to find out where you are.

We think it's absolutely brilliant - and so we've set-up a Greener Leith lending circle on the site, and integrated it into the Greener Leith Social.

We've added an Energy Monitor, a Bike Trailer, and a socket set into the lending circle at the moment. But, if it's really to work, then we need lot's of Leithers to sign-up and add stuff to the lending circle. It's free to sign-up - but it only really starts to get interesting when you start to ask yourself, what can I lend?

You can sign-up here:

http://www.ecomodo.com/pages/register_1.aspx

However, once you've signed-up, don't forget to join the Greener Leith Lending Circle and add some stuff to it. You can find it here:

http://www.ecomodo.com/pages/circle_items.aspx?id=f464b262-7ff6-4188-aad4-96376e7df52f