Interest-free group in Couchsurfing

Text written by Miguel Ganzo (miguel.ganzo@jak.se)

www.couchsurfing.org is a website and a non profit organization where members share their homes with other members. That is: when you are travelling, instead of sleeping in a hotel or hostel you can sleep in other people’s homes. And when you are at home you can host travellers who are visiting your city or village. In couchsurfing there is all kind of groups. There is, for example, a Leonard Cohen group, so if I like Leonard Cohen I can be member and try to visit other Leonard Cohen fans in my travels. And now there is also an Interest-free group which we have created thinking in all of us who dream about an interest-free economy. Let’s say that I am travelling to Copenhagen and there is a member in the Interest-free group who lives there and want to host me. Then I can sleep at his/her place and we can meet each other and talk about JAK Denmark and JAK Sweden in a much better way than by e-mail.

This is the presentation of the Interest-free group in couchsurfing:

“We don’t like to earn money as the result of a passive ownership but instead as the result of active working.

We start this group in Sweden, inspired by example of JAK Medlemsbank (JAK Members Bank) (www.jak.se) , which is a cooperative of more than 35.000 members who lend money to each other without using any kind of interest. It is beautiful.

In JAK, those who borrow money do not pay interest to those who save money. However, they have to pay the administration costs of the loan.

In Denmark, Italy, New Zeeland, USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Holland,…there are people who dislikes the use of interest in economy and they are working in different interest-free alternatives. We open this group for all of them, for all of us; let’s enrich our travels meeting people who share our ideals. Let’s learn of each other!”