HANGZHOU, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Alibaba Group is testing a new model of elderly care through its "time bank," which makes every hour people spend advancing public welfare exchangeable for services for seniors, the company said on Tuesday.
According to a memorandum of understanding on cooperation signed between Alibaba Foundation and the bureau of civil affairs of Binjiang District in the east China city of Hangzhou, online Alibaba users will have a unified quantitative standard to evaluate their public welfare acts.
Alibaba also unveiled a set of criteria, the first in China to measure the value of voluntary service hours and philanthropic behaviors, with its basic unit named "public welfare hours."
Public welfare hours can be deposited in the time bank by volunteering offline, donating blood, planting trees via Alibaba's Ant Forest scheme and more.
The time bank is a good step forward in building an exchange and incentive mechanism which aims at improving voluntary services for elderly people, especially for those who are disabled, live alone or suffer from dementia, the bureau said.
