one way to get involved in your community: the repair cafe movement
one way to get involved in your community: the repair cafe movement
Repair Café is here to help you fix your broken items. Join our community of skilled volunteers and get your belongings repaired in a sustainable way.
no doubt some of you are already quite familiar with these--they might even be a staple in your community already--but for those of you who have not heard of repair cafes before, here's a concept of how the most organized ones work:
Repair Cafés are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things (together). In the place where a Repair Café is located, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make any repairs you need. On clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera. You’ll also find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields.
Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.
the most "formally" organized of these are also frequently affiliated with Repair Café International Foundation, a foundation which exists to promote and advance the concept (they also collaborate with iFixit to produce repair guides). affiliated ones are also very common in Europe, which isn't surprising since the Foundation is based out of Amsterdam. on non-European continents, these are less frequent and mostly found in larger cities (the site keeps a list with contact information if you'd like to get in touch with one). if you're in a larger city and looking for a quick and simple way to get involved in something or volunteer a repair skill, you might be able to just check out one near you. if you want to start one affiliated with the Foundation i believe they have a whole kit and process for that detailed on the site.
but the idea of "organizing a space where people can come and get things fixed, help fix things, and learn how to fix things" is also a simple one that transcends any one group and can probably be organized just about anywhere. you don't have to be affiliated with anyone to make that happen, you just need the people, the tools, and a good scope of what you can offer between those two things. if you and a friend think you can offer literally any kind of basic repair--however humble--to people in your community, however large or small? that's a good seed to start something like this from.
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Not sure if it's the same thing, but there's several DIY bike repair shops. I'm only really familiar with the ones in Toronto, but I know there are plenty elsewhere.
Most of them are open for folks to come in and use the space to repair their bicycles 3 or 4 times a week. Always volunteers around to help out (usually only to give advice though, most of the time it is still on you to do the work). I love visiting them to do minor repairs, though have never been a volunteer (considered it late 2019, but then pandemic started and I backed out).
Their funding is usually donations, any parts you need to use. All of the ones I've seen also sell refurbished bikes that the volunteers build outside of the DIY hours. Usually really cheap, since they mostly use donated parts. Not quite as cheap as craigslist, but less likely to be stolen :)
Never thought of a more general space for repairing things. I really like the idea.