The Baltimore Rapport

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One of the goals we intend to pursue here at The Rapport is to share with our listeners the noble work done by citizen-activists across our City.  There are so many good people doing so many good things for Baltimore that we could only hope to dedicate enough space on our site to talk to them all.  Since we cannot, what we will do is take time every now and then to recognize their work by sharing their stories with our audience.  And Jason Lee has a story worth sharing.

Jason is pursuing both a Juris Doctorate (JD) and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Maryland.  Using skill-sets acquired in the classroom, Jason spent time developing energy infrastructure in Burkina Faso working under the auspices of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa initiative.  Jason is also active with New Song Urban Ministries, a Christian Community Development program in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore.  There, Jason worked to implement a Time Bank program in which the value of volunteer time was quantified and traded.

In this interview, Jason discusses the concept of the Time Dollar as envisioned by Edgar Cahn, some of the successes and challenges he encountered in attempting to set-up the program, and the future work of New Song.  Take a listen to Jason’s inspiring story.