Carol Brouillet

Carol is an expert on local currencies from Santa Cruz, CA.

Carol Brouillet is a Co-Founder of the International Media Project, which produces Making Contact, a half-hour radio program now heard on over 165 stations, primarily in the U.S. and Canada. (Making Contact will also pilot a new daily show beginning in February 2001.)

Carol also helped found the Who's Counting Project, which promotes the film Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies & Global Economics. Both non-profits seek to connect people, vital ideas and important information to nurture healthy social change, economic justice and ecological sustainability. A passionate advocate of local currencies to raise consciousness, nurture community, and increase local self-reliance, her paper Reinventing Money, Restoring the Earth, Reweaving the Web of Life has won an honourable mention from the Millenium Institute as one of the best ideas for the 21st Century.

Raised in California, she sailed around the world in her youth, and has traveled extensively.

Her political activism began in 1992 when she saw a film which disturbed her and started to do research on the government and the media. She began by writing articles and promoting books and films, such as Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the Media.

Her activism has spanned a wide range of issues. In 1993 she read Debt Virus, A Compelling Solution to the World's Debt Problems by Jaques Jaikaran and an article by Paul Glover "Creating Economic Democracy" and began writing on Money -- our civilization's largest blind spot. From writing articles to helping to organize events, conferences on the issue of money and Global Economics, and public speaking, she does all she can to raise consciousness and change the system.

In January '98, she organized the first "Gathering on Strategies to Transform the Global Economy," in February '99, she organized a second "Gathering" (article about it appearing in the Christian Science Monitor), (Report From the February Gathering). There was so much energy gathered that 24 people volunteered to help six months later with The August Gathering. Carol is also the Green Network Center for Community Currencies. She is a member of the Green Party which includes local currencies in its platform and a member of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was interviewed by Sojourn, Fall, 1998 that issue focused on Community Currency.

Instead of organizing another Gathering in January, 2001, Carol tried to help with the first World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 25-30, 2001, at the same time that the World Economic Forum was meeting in Switzerland. Here is the Report on the World Social Forum and the Call for Mobilization. Energized by the historic event, she was working on combatting the FTAA, the WTO, the IMF, World Bank, and corporate globalization, speaking out against the FTAA, writing, and organizing in the U.S.