News from our network

The Repair Café is also seriously beginning to take off in France now. Since the summer holidays, the Repair Café Foundation has had dozens of requests from interested parties in France. “A wonderful development”, says Repair Café creator Martine Postma.

The number of Repair Cafés located around the world keeps increasing. Since March of this year, 200 local Repair Café groups have joined. Especially in Germany, this number is rapidly increasing. And there are also new countries that are now part of the Repair Café network.

People who volunteer at a Repair Café are most strongly motivated to take part because of what they can do for others. They want to help other people live more sustainably, to provide a valuable service to the community and to help improve product reparability and longevity. This is revealed by research, recently undertaken by The Centre for Sustainable Design in Farnham, UK.

Europe must actively promote repair as an alternative to throwing away and buying new goods. That is what the German Federal Minister for Environment, Barbara Hendricks, said on April 7 at the European Forum on Eco-Innovation in Hannover. In her opening speech, the Minister mentioned the Repair Café as an example of what Europe needs in order to achieve a circular economy.

The Repair Café is extremely popular in Germany. Repair Cafés can be found in many German towns and cities. At all levels, people are talking about the concept more and more. This spring, Repair Café creator Martine Postma goes to Germany more than once to talk about the Repair Café concept.

The number of Repair Cafés continues to grow steadily. In the Netherlands, there are already more than 200 Repair Café groups: four times as much as a year ago. Also in other countries the number has grown to over 200. That means that worldwide, more than 400 Repair Cafés can be found!

The Repair Café Netherlands Foundation is going to cooperate with a German partner organisation. Starting January 2014 the Stiftungsgemeinschaft anstiftung & ertomis will dedicate itself to spreading the Repair Café concept further in Germany. She will, among other things, act as a contact for German Repair Café groups and intends to organise a German Repair Café day in 2014.

The Dutch Repair Cafés go around the world! The international tv channel Aljazeera English broadcasted a report on the concept this summer, in the weekly programme Earthrise. An Earthrise camera team came to the Netherlands for three days to shoot the item. They visited the main Repair Café in Amsterdam and spoke with the founder of the Repair Café Foundation.