Littrell, 41, is the Assistant Program Coordinator for the Emma Family Resource Center in West Asheville. Disabled after a series of auto accidents, she understands what it's like to need help in hard times.
"Emma is a community of about 1,000 families," she says, describing where she lives. It's a place of small homes, mobile home parks and a housing project. It has a diverse population including recent immigrants from former Soviet Union countries and Central America.
Emma Elementary School is the heart of the community, and the Family Resource Center is located on the school grounds. When Littrell went there for help in 2002, the Center was in a small modular building, and it had a cramped food pantry and limited space for a nurse practitioner and a Department of Social Services representative who came twice a week. It's grown to larger quarters now.
The Center holds an annual "Spring Fling" fundraiser, and Littrell and her family went for the clothes bargains. A few days later, she was notified by the Center that she had won a prize.
"I stopped by on a rainy Saturday afternoon," she remembers, "and there was a sign on the door that said ‘Due to decreased funding, we're temporarily closed.'
"When it opened back up, I returned and asked what I could do. They said, ‘You can volunteer.'"
That got her started and she hasn't quit.
The program that's put Littrell and her co-workers in the news is their "Emma Bucks" currency. It was featured recently at a Research Triangle Park conference celebrating small philanthropies and sponsored by NCGives, a Raleigh-based initiative.
Emma Bucks started in 2003 and is based on a time bartering concept developed by Edgar Cahn, an anti-poverty activist in Washington, DC. People who participate are given an "Emma Buck" for every hour of service they perform for someone else. They can then spend their "bucks" getting services in return.
Explains Littrell, "Someone can earn two Emma Bucks for babysitting. They can spend those bucks with another Emma Bucks member to get their hot water heater fixed."
She tells one story after another of how the program has brought neighbors together, saved them money, and made life-long friendships. It's an economy, in Cahn's words, "of family, neighborhood and community" that operates on the principles of "sharing, loyalty, love, and pitching in."
Littrell manages the program and boasts that it had 29 members when it started and now has 132. Over the years, 3,614 Emma Bucks have traded hands.
"I grew up in a community where neighbors took care of each other. To me, this system is a model of what we ought to be doing for each other. It's decreased the crime rate. Elderly have help. It gives people a chance to give back."
As for members' self-esteem—including Littrell's—"It's way up there," she smiles.
