Why a Repair Café?
We throw away vast amounts of stuff in Europe. Even things with almost nothing wrong, and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves or they no longer know how. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. Society doesn’t always show much appreciation for the people who still have this practical knowledge, and against their will they are often left standing on the sidelines. Their experience is never used, or hardly ever. The Repair Café is changing all that! People who might otherwise be sidelined are getting involved again. Valuable practical knowledge is getting passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products. It cuts CO2 emissions, for example, because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.
The Repair Café teaches people to see their possessions in a new light. And, once again, to appreciate their value. The Repair Café helps change people’s mindset. This is essential to kindle people’s enthusiasm for a sustainable society. Moreover, 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.
Most of all, the Repair Café just wants to show how much fun repairing things can be, and how easy it often is. Why don’t you give it a go?
Start a Repair Café
Would you like to start your own Repair Café? You can!
Stichting Repair Café supports local groups to start their own Repair Café.
We offer the following free of charge: » a comprehensive information package; » customised advice; » posters and flyers; » publicity via our network.
All services by Stichting Repair Café are free of charge, on three conditions: » When we support an initiative and help it to get started, it must be called Repair Café (and not DIY workplace, Odd Job cafe or any other such name); » The Repair Café logo must always be used for publicity and any communications; and » Publicity and communications will, for additional information, always refer to www.repaircafe.org
The idea behind these conditions is that we can all jointly build up a network of active Repair Cafés, and that information about them remains together (and therefore easily found by outsiders) via the Repair Café site.
Please get in touch with us to ask for our support.