The Bank of the Future, storing the hopes of tomorrow
[Not only saving money, but also storing dreams]
Bank loans are for profit, but future bank loans are for the beautiful dream of the Earth.
"If the money you deposit in the bank is used for military enterprises, or for private arms dealers, would you still deposit it?"
Before talking about the ”future bank”, let us first go back to the 1990s, when a Japanese NGO leader, Yu Tanaka, discovered that the entity that launched Japan's war of aggression against China and provided huge amounts of funding for it was actually the post office. Even in the Iraq War, the commercial financiers among American arms dealers included Japanese banks. With such a discovery, he began to feel that "where the money in the bank is invested is something we should think about carefully." Thus Yu Tanaka's worry turned into practical action for change.
"It would be better to invest in a future we can hope to see!" In order to let people not only save money in the bank, but also save a green, environmentally friendly dream for the future, Yu Tanaka and other friends jointly established the ”Future Bank Business Cooperative”. Citizens' deposits also earn interest, and the future bank concentrates its loans in three fields: environmental protection, social welfare, and social enterprises.
[Stay small-scale and focus on the community]
The future bank does not pursue scaling up. Its operating strategy is: steadily growing depositors, carefully selected loan projects, and maintaining zero bad debt as much as possible.
Steady, solid progress creates a good model, encouraging others to also set up future banks of the same nature in their own areas and inspiring more communities to jointly establish local future banks, becoming a new emerging economic entity of regional self-reliance.
To date, Japan has more than 20 such banks. Perhaps because they focus their vision on the future, some of the current lending projects are quite heartwarming, such as: citizens buying energy-saving appliances, nonprofit organizations such as NPOs buying solar equipment, opening an organic food store, supporting fair trade, and nursing homes having everything they should have.
[Sprout! The future bank model of musicians]
In May 2004, Kazutoshi Sakurai, lead singer of the Japanese pop band Mr.Children, whose music is sweet as poetry, music producer Takeshi Kobayashi, and world-renowned composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, also because of being inspired by the future bank, founded AP Bank, a bank that invests in ”the environment and renewable energy”!
Currently, besides opening an organic ingredient restaurant in Tokyo, AP Bank also carries out a series of delicious connections between city people and farmers across Japan!
For example, it opened a farm in Kisarazu, Chiba, allowing city people to experience farming and learn about crops and agricultural work. The rest is also used for matters such as post-disaster reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and a large part of its funding also comes from AP Bank's annual music festival.
In fact, artists in Taiwan, China, have also begun to pay more and more attention to social issues. From the recent MaydayEnter the Battle Array, as well as music groups such as Sodagreen, Deserts Chang, Bearbabes, and Cosmos People, all have one after another begun to try to use their own musical influence to let more important issues be seen.
Is there a possibility of integrating communities and artists/organizations/enterprises from different fields to carry out community-based future banks with the community as the unit, taking directly from the community and using it for the community? This might perhaps be an interesting new model of social design for a community-type approach!