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Writer's pictureKristina Zill

Repair Café – Delhi


Our first Repair Café will take place at Bushel, 84 Main Street, Delhi on Saturday, May 13th from 10 am to 2 pm. We have Repair Coaches skilled at fixing small appliances, vacuum cleaners, lamps, furniture and clothing. So brave the forecast rain and come join us on Saturday!

Our goal is to bring the Repair Café to villages throughout the Catskills. We’ve already set the date for our next one, which will be held on Saturday, July 22nd at the United Methodist Church in Hobart from 10 am to 2 pm

What is a Repair Café? Repair Cafés are free community events that are all about repairing things together. In the place where a Repair Café is located, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make the repairs you need. The types of repairs depend on the Repair Coaches who have volunteered to lend their expertise to this particular event, so each gathering will be slightly different from the next. Visitors bring their broken items from home. In the Repair Café, they start making their repairs, together with the coaches. 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 with books on do-it-yourself repairs procured from Creative Corner Books in Hobart Book Village.

Why do we need a Repair Café? We throw away vast amounts of stuff – even things with almost nothing wrong, and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. Many people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves, or they have lost the skill. Society doesn’t always show much appreciation for those who still have this practical knowledge, and their skills are underused.

The Repair Café changes all that! People with repair skills share their valuable practical knowledge with the community. 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 to appreciate their value. This change in mindset is essential to kindle people’s enthusiasm for a sustainable society. But most of all, the Repair Café just wants to show how much fun repairing things can be, and how easy it usually is.

Where did it start? The first Repair Café was held by Martine Postma in Amsterdam in 2009. It was so popular throughout the Netherlands that she decided to start a foundation and create a template that could be used all over the world. Today, there are about 200 Repair Cafés in North America and Canada.

What do we hope to accomplish?

● To transform our throw-away economy, one beloved item at a time ● To reduce how much stuff goes into the waste stream ● To preserve repair know-how and skills, and pass them on ● To show the people who have this knowledge that they are valued ● To feed our curiosity about “the way things work” ● To be creative and have fun! ● To build community and sustainability

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