Photo: The participants of the CBI mini-trial hard at work, courtesy Live Well Tasmania
Live Well Tasmania is conducting a campaign for a trial of Community Based Income (CBI) in North-West Tasmania. Live Well Tasmania is very much aligned with the Transition Movement, particularly in terms of the Transition core principles of resource limits and resilience, inclusivity and social justice, subsidiarity, balance and collaboration. Similarly Live Well Tasmania believes in localisation, community projects, education and awareness, all being key aspects of Transition projects.
In particular, both Live Well Tasmania and the CBI project have an underlying focus on Inner Transition, which emerged from the recognition that outer changes in society and the environment are deeply connected to inner changes in individuals and communities.
CBI is a liveable wage paid to those who provide a good or service deemed to be directly or indirectly of benefit to society, including providing caring services, engaging in education and training, and in community projects that can both increase individual health and wellbeing and benefits the community. Person-centred care and co-design are key principles of this project, such that the community in effect decides how participants are deemed eligible for the income. CBI is based on a community development framework, where community development is defined by the United Nations as “a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems”. Another definition by Cambridge University Press is that it, “involves the empowerment of individuals and groups with the skills they need to effect change within their communities”.
A CBI aims to address four problems in the short term which both affect individual health and wellbeing and the health of our economy:
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- unemployment
- poverty, particularly inter-generational poverty, and rising costs of living
- a non-fit for purpose welfare system
- the lack of work that could be happening in our communities to improve life for everyone, including promoting conversations about what we value
This article builds on a talk given for the Stories of Transition in February 2023, see https://transitionaustralia.net/stories-of-transition-feb-2023/ but reports on how the project has progressed since then. In that talk the concept was called participation income, however we have since renamed it Community Based Income to emphasise that it is aimed to be by the community for the community.
One main achievement since then has been the making of a video as an introduction to CBI, see https://cbitasmania.org.au/peoples-stories, we were very thankful that Hannah Moloney (see photo below), Director of Good Life Permaculture, and author of Good Life Growing.
We have also given presentations to more local governments in North-West Tasmania, and continue to receive enthusiastic feedback about the project. We also continue to compile a list of community projects for which participants could be paid the CBI, for which Transition offers a very rich array of great projects.
But we are very excited about a project we received funding for last year as a ‘proof of concept’. It is a mini-trial of CBI: we found four young people (all 21 years old) who were interested in being involved in skill building and community projects. So far they have assisted our local food emergency food relief community hub, including conducting a food drive, have volunteered at a community garden at the local high school, and are currently assisting with a breeding program for the endangered orange bellied parrot.
Photo: Hannah Moloney who features in our CBI video’s, Courtesy Nick Higgins, Cape Studio.
Robin Krabbe, Live Well Tasmania, Jan 2025