The 4th international conference on Complementary Currencies and Time Banks took place in Barcelona, on the second week of May 2017. This is a biennial conference that has been held before in Lyon, France (2011), The Hague, Holland (2013) and Salvador de Bahía, Brazil (2015).

Usually, the conferences are organized by academics and members of the international movement of time banks and complementary currencies. On this occasion, the organization was taken over by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in collaboration with RAMICS, the Research Association on Monetary Innovation and Community and Complementary Currency Systems.

More than 400 attendees coming from 36 countries participated in this conference. International experts on the social and collaborating economy were sharing their views and explained how time banks and social currencies are used for helping local economies, people and particularly the elder.

MyMate has decided to attend the Conference in order to get information, establish contacts and disseminate the project. Spanish members of MyMate have contacted to several associations involved in developing and managingTime Banks.

Also, especial efforts have been done to connect with relevant international experts from England, Holland and Germany inviting them to participate as members of our Market Advisors Panel (MAP).

Important topics for MyMate:

• Many time banks in England and elsewhere are related to elderly people and can be interested in the My Mate approach
• Several experts have manifested to be interested in participating as members of the Advisory Board
• The European Union has done an investigation into the use of reciprocal volunteering and complementary currencies for social impact.

The results are available here: http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC85642.pdf.