Candelo Go offers Bega Valley community car share, with hopes to start tool or food sharing arrangements

The community-based initiative was set up as a passion project by a number of people from Candelo on the Far South Coast of NSW.

It started when president Robyn Martin decided to offer her van to the community in exchange for a donation.

"I was interested in using less, living cheaper, and changing my lifestyle from so busy to having more time."

Ms Martin wanted to reduce the expense of owning a vehicle but still wanted to have access to one due to the nature of living in a small regional town and the lack of available public transport.

Candelo Go was born in 2018 after Ms Martin asked a group of locals to form a committee with her.

For a while the van was the only available vehicle, however a Honda Jazz was eventually purchased by the group after the parents of a committee member decided to update their own car.

The Honda Jazz was given the name Little Miles after jazz singer Miles Davis and a nod to his album Kind of Blue.

Little Miles offered community members a smaller more economical vehicle than the van.

In recent years, Ms Martin's van was removed from the system and returned to being a private vehicle for her as she needed it more once her touring music career really kicked off.

Interesting to note was that Little Miles was purchased by the group using the Bega Valley LETS trading system, using Sapphires or "Sapphs" instead of dollars.

Sapphs are traded, saved and used to purchase goods and services at the community level. The trades are often made through bartering, skill sharing, or resource sharing.

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Although the ride share initiative started out as a rental service offered by donation, the committee soon realised it was too challenging for people so instead worked out an affordable fixed price.

The price to hire the vehicle is $10 per day plus 0.10c per km, but the group has been flexible with those on lower incomes. Little Miles can also be hired using Sapphs.

"It's much cheaper than hire car companies who are also paying staff. This is a volunteer organisation," said Ms Martin.

The vehicle can be booked by members using a shared Google calendar with money deposited into Candelo Go's bank account.

The price was determined after the group looked at the usage the car was getting (currently 7 to 10 days per month) and factored in its running and maintenance costs.

"So far it's been paying for itself. The idea isn't to make a profit but it has been covering rego, maintenance, and insurance.

"We are putting a little extra aside each year so that by the time the vehicle is expired we should have enough to purchase another vehicle," said Ms Martin.

Little Miles is stored at Saint Peter's Anglican Church in Candelo through an agreement with the church.

Ms Martin said before the van was retired it was used for events like bucks parties and by touring musicians.

Little Miles has been used more widely, but also works well for people with accessibility challenges.

"One person had to transport an elderly person and their car was too big and awkward to get into so they used the little car and could take them around," said Ms Martin.

The idea behind Candelo Go had always been to branch out into other resource-sharing initiatives.

"The vision right from the start was that we would be set up to respond to any need in the community, whether it was a tool shed, food share - or anything really," said Ms Martin.

Candelo Go also has a 10 person licence for accounting software and hoped to establish more initiatives in the coming years.

The only issue was that many of the six committee members were time poor.

Candelo Go would be happy for community members to express their interest in joining if they have a vision to create more sharing arrangements.

Membership to Candelo Go costs $10 per year and membership forms can be accessed online using this form.

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