Locals call it a Leihladen. North of Berlin's centre, Leila is a pioneer of sharing in a consumer society.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below about it.
We’ve got a car coffee machine, baby carrier, ice-skates, plates and cups, power tools, party stuff. I think this is for clip, stuff like this, we’ve even got two unicycles.
This shop is called Leila, which in German is short for Leihladen, which means (1) borrow shop, a library of things.
In order to become a member you have to be willing to share. So each member has (2) to bring an item of their own to this shop, and that’s their membership fee.
There I would like to have a helmet for my child because I’m getting a children’s seat for the bike.
You come, you borrow things, it’s noted down in a folder, (3) we agree a time how long will you keep it, when do you bring it back.
It’s a great idea because I have so many things at home that I don’t need. I would love to bring them and get something that I need in return.
The only financial aspect we have is (4) the rent for the room, it’s all voluntary, but a lot of our members are quite willing to give two or three euros a month. It’s mainly about people and because there is no real contract all we have is trust. We trust people, they trust us to take care of their things when they bring them here, so it’s a matter of personal interaction.
We had a sort of precursor which is called Geschenkebox where you just put things, gifted things and anybody can come and take stuff out, so this is a kind of follow-on from that.
If we try to meet our human needs together, we get off a lot more sustainable when without it. Some people say, oh this is socialist work that you’re doing. I wouldn’t say so because at least it’s not GDR type of socialism because people do it out of free will, they can leave any time they want and nobody gets observed by any Stasi, no, it’s not socialism, it’s just common sense.
They have ice-skates and land-skates and my daughter could try before we buy them, so I think it’s cool, yeah.
The power tools get borrowed all the time. There’s statistics saying over a lifetime of a power drill it’s used for (5) 30 minutes. People are very glad if they don’t have to buy them.
I probably make a cake once a year. It’s coming and just getting a mixer for the day, it’s genius. I would love to see this in places like Chicago.
For us, this is open source. We’d love people to copy this.
We have very few cases where we democratically decide that (6) this person will not be allowed to borrow anything else before they bring back what they have.
If things get lost we can stay calm and just say, okay, it will come again.
You have your cold, hopefully just for a few weeks, inflatable boats, you put your children in there, the unicycles you have to be a bit daring to borrow but yes, they do get borrowed.
