In [the] bustling [Greek port city Volos], in the heart of Greece's most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity - adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success. Organisers say some 1,300 people have signed up to the informal bartering network. The currency - a form of community banking monitored exclusively online - is not only an effective antidote to wage cuts and soaring taxes but the best kind of shopping therapy". Greece's deepening economic crisis has brought new users. With ever more families plunging into poverty and despair, shops, cafes, factories and businesses have also resorted to the system under which goods and services - everything from yoga sessions to healthcare, babysitting to computer support - are traded in lieu of credits. "For many it plays a double role of supplementing lost income and creating a protective web at this particularly difficult moment in their lives," says Yiannis Grigoriou, a UK-educated sociologist among the network's founders. "The older generation in this country can still remember when bartering was commonplace. In villages you'd exchange milk and goat's cheese for meat and flour." Other grassroots initiatives have appeared across Greece.

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