Engather is a locally-based gift economy platform that reweaves the social fabric of our communities through supportive, joyful human connections.
Co-Founder, Amanda Cassiday, was kind enough to give us the 411 on her app helping to grow gifting movement:
a) What is Engather?
Engather is a community-driven culture and tech platform that allows people to offer gifts they want to give or request gifts that they need or want. This is pure, unconditional gift. No quid pro quo, no barter, no trade, no time banking, no financial transaction. No one is keeping score of how much you give or receive. No one is gamifying the system by quantifying your value in the number of likes and shares. Rather, this is simply about deepening your connection with the people around you by giving and receiving support.
It could be anything–teaching a new skill, being a sounding board for ideas, offering a mid-day dog walk, requesting a bunch of extra hands to help with a project at home–the possibilities are abundant! And in between the gifts shared and connections formed, we offer events for members to gather and relate meaningfully.
b) What gap is the platform filling? Why was it created?
Since the dawn of human history, we have quite literally relied on one another to survive. In many cultures and many parts of the world, these networks of interdependence still exist today and are at the very heart of what it means to live in community.
Today, in this corner of the world that has thrived off of individualism and consumption, we’re living in a time where many of us are working very hard to “earn a living” and also find ourselves more exhausted, burnt out, and lonely than ever before.
So, the gap here is community. It’s supporting one another. It’s investing in each other’s lives and in this community we live in. And it is a deepened sense of belonging that tells us that we have gifts to contribute to this place and are worthy of receiving the support we need to thrive. To do this, Engather was created to revive a way of being–what is now known as the gift economy, or sacred reciprocity–and re-established a practice of supporting one another as the backbone of our humanity.
c) Why test run in Kingston?
Kingston is my home, and since living here I have been quite taken by its strong sense of community and mutual support. So many of us are connected here, and many of us are showing up to support one another and see this community thrive. It is also where my co-founder Chris Woerhle and I met, at a Good Work Institute conference about democratizing wealth and building cultures of reciprocity.
So it felt like a very natural fit to offer this service, co-create this platform, and rediscover this way of being in a town that is already striving to weave a tighter social fabric of community. Also, as trust is at the heart of the gift economy, the best way we could honor this need for trust is by starting with our own community and creating a model for co-ownership and co-creation of this platform with the folks who have the vision, commitment, and courage to bring this practice back into our daily lives.
Join the movement. CLICK HERE.