The COVID-19 situation in many countries is improving. Still, Repair Café International advises everyone to keep a close eye on the COVID regulations in their country and to comply with them. Let’s do everything we can to get the virus under control!

Contact your local Repair Café!

Do you want to know if you can visit the Repair Café in your community? Then contact the organizers.

22 November 2021

The situation around COVID-19 remains challenging. In many countries, the virus is spreading faster again and measures are being tightened. Do you want to know if you can visit the Repair Café in your community? Then contact the organizers.

Repair Café International advises everyone to keep a close eye on the COVID regulations in their country and to comply with them. Let’s do everything we can to get the virus under control!

27 May 2021

Check when your Repair Café will open again!

More and more people are vaccinated against COVID-19. In most countries, public life is gradually resuming. Repair Cafés will probably be able to reopen soon as well, in all likelihood with extra measures regarding hygiene and keeping your distance.

Do you want to know if your Repair Café will reopen? Then contact the organizers.

Repair Café International advises everyone to keep a close eye on the COVID regulations in their country and to comply with them. Then we will get the virus under control the quickest and we can come together again safely, for example to repair together!

04 January 2021

Still no Repair Cafes for the time being

Repair Café meetings are still not possible in most countries. The situation around the COVID-19 virus doesn’t allow it.

Repair Café International advises everyone to comply with the COVID rules in their country. It’s the only way to get the virus under control and once again start repairing together. We hope to be able to share better news soon!

07 September 2020

Repair Café in the 1.5 meter society

For Repair Café organizers who are considering to reopen, we now have a special document available. This document, called Ideas for Repair Café in the 1.5 meter society, offers a lot of ideas for organizing safe repair events in your community during the coronacrisis.

This document was created by volunteers from various Repair Cafés in different countries, in collaboration with Repair Café International. More ideas are still welcome (see contact details of those involved in the document). You can also ask questions and share advice via the Repair Café forum!

26 August 2020

Will your Repair Café open again?

The summer holidays are (almost) over and Repair Cafés in various countries are preparing for a restart. In many places, extra measures have been taken to be able to work safely, with extra hygiene facilities and sufficient distance between people.

However, not all Repair Cafés will reopen yet. Some don’t dare to do it yet, some don’t have enough space or don’t have permission of the property manager.

Always contact the organizer
Do you want to know if your Repair Café will start again in September? Then contact the organizer! Note: the opening hours on Repaircafe.org/en/visit are general days and times. These do not take into account special situations, such as the corona limitations. Therefore always contact the organizer of your Repair Café in advance!

14 May 2020

Gradual easing of corona measures

In many countries, corona measures are currently being relaxed gradually. Unfortunately, it is not possible for Repair Café International to follow daily information about regulations, prohibitions and restrictions for all countries and regions with sufficient accuracy. That is why we cannot advise about hosting Repair Cafés in all countries. We refer English speaking organisers to one of the following websites:

UK: government website with information about what you can and can’t do;
US: government website with information about community events in corona times;
Canada: government website about the coronavirus disease;
Australia: government website with information about the easing of restrictions.

We encourage everyone to find out about local and regional regulations in their respective districts, cities or municipalities.

21 April 2020

Repair Café TV connects repairers in the United States

Repair Café volunteers in the US are launching ‘Repair Café TV‘ today. At 7.30 PM Eastern time a panel of repair coaches from across the country will answer questions about repairs that you can do at home. The free, online Repair Café will be Zoom-based. Everyone from anywhere can attend with a computer, tablet or smartphone.

More information is on the website of Repair Café North Carolina!

1 April 2020

#FixAtHome against the corona blues

Now that more and more people are forced to stay at home, it’s time to fight the corona blues. What can be better to do this than making repairs? In the next two weeks, iFixit, Repair Café International and other organisations are running the hashtag campaign #FixAtHome. The campaign will run on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Participating is very easy. Share social posts with the hashtag #FixAtHome about things like:

• Repairs/projects/builds you’re currently working on at home
• Instructions for projects that can be done at home
• Food for thought: Why repair is a good thing (e.g. evergreen blog posts, podcasts)

Want to know more? Watch this video by Jiri Krejci, read the campaign brief by iFixit and join #FixAtHome

24 March 2020

No repair meetings until June 2020

Repair Café International advises all Repair Cafés around the world to cancel all repair meetings until 1 June 2020. With this advice, we respond to new, more stringent measures that more and more countries are taking to control the coronavirus.

We advise all Repair Café organizers to stay informed of current measures via the news channels in their own country.

16 March 2020

Advice: no Repair Cafés until April 6

Repair Café International advises Repair Cafés around the world not to hold repair meetings in the coming weeks. This way we want to help limit the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The advice applies in any case until April 6.

Events of 50 people or more
The advice is in line with measures that have been taken widely against the spread of the virus. In the United States, for example, organizers are advised to cancel in-person events that consist of 50 people or more.

Numerous Repair Cafés, especially in Europe, had already decided to cancel their repair meetings in the coming weeks. This applies, for example, to the Repair Cafés in Tours (France), The Hague (Netherlands) and Morsbach (Germany).

Repair at home
Repair Café International wishes everyone luck in the coming weeks. “If you feel healthy, you can of course continue repairing at home”, says director Martine Postma. “Let’s hope that it will soon be possible to do so again outdoors, in the thousands of Repair Cafés around the world.”

Het bericht Keep a close eye on the COVID regulations in your country verscheen eerst op Repaircafe.

Far less repairs recorded

In 2020, volunteers entered only 5,500 repairs in the RepairMonitor: far less than in 2018 and 2019. This is not surprising; due to the lockdown, Repair Cafés in most countries were at a standstill for months starting in mid-March. Repairing together was not permitted.

Repairing was even more popular than ever

Yet, in the first months of 2020, the number of repairs carried out was higher than in the same period of 2019.

Long queues at waste recycling centres

Repair Café International is afraid that in the rest of 2020, many items were unjustly thrown away. “From the start of the lockdown, we’ve seen long row of cars at recycling centres and waste stations”, says director Martine Postma. “People cleaned up their homes and threw things away en masse during the pandemic. Even things that could have been repaired in the Repair Café or that could have been made to work perfectly again with a bit of care and maintenance.”

High demand for repair services

For this reason, Martine believes it’s essential that Repair Cafés be allowed to reopen quickly. “The RepairMonitor shows once again that they meet a huge need. More and more people want to repair things and like to get some help with that at a Repair Café. Given the circular economy, they should be getting that support again as soon as possible.”

More results from the RepairMonitor

Do you want to know which items the Repair Cafés in your country see most often? And which item is most often successfully repaired? Our factsheet contains many more results from 2020 and previous years. Download the factsheet here:

• Factsheet RepairMonitor A4 format
• Factsheet RepairMonitor A3 format

Het bericht RepairMonitor: much less repaired in 2020 verscheen eerst op Repaircafe.

Lockdown story of Lover Repair Cafe

Lover is a small village eight miles south of Salisbury. In March 2019 a small group of retired people with many varying craft skills set up a Repair Cafe meeting every Wednesday morning offering repair help to the local community. This very quickly grew to a membership of 26 in the team serving an area of approximately twenty miles radius.

And then in March 2020 along came ‘Lock-down’. This really frustrated the management team as we were prohibited from using the local Village Hall and also from gathering together for a coffee, a chat and communal repairs. There was a real determination to continue the helpful service, especially for the many vulnerable senior citizens in the locality.

Continuing the service

So, having carefully checked the Government Covid Regulations and the available resources, we came up with the idea of a ‘REMOTE REPAIR CENTRE’ as a temporary means of continuing the service. In fact, we were prepared to offer the service on both the Wednesday and Friday mornings – after all, where else were we going to go during Covid?

We were in the fortunate position of having a member of the group living nearly opposite the Village Hall. He also had a double garage in his front garden with lots of room on his driveway for access. On checking with the helpers it was found that we had six who were willing and able to ‘work from home’ along with two more (an electrician & joiner) plus an administrator/treasurer, all duly masked up & Covid Aware. And so we were all set to continue the operations. Following a lot of publicity we soon found that people could and would walk by and drop off items and also arrange to drive by and drop off their repair works.

One of the volunteers in Lover has a double garage in his front garden with lots of room on his driveway for access.

In fact very quickly we became a drop-off & pick-up service, as the idea was that we simply took in and registered an item – farmed it out for repair – phoned the client when ready for pick-up.

We may fix it!

Fortunately for us, word got around and we have now gained more helpers with specialist skills and improved our ability to provide answers any queries. Our outstanding concern is locating a weaver for chair repairs.

As can be imagined various ‘problems’ cropped up along the way, but our motto is “Do not Bin it – We may Fix it”. With that in mind, we have always been able to adjust our delivery to fit in with requirements. For instance, how do you use a garage in the middle of winter? You go to a local marquee manufacturer and he makes you a fantastic PVC awning that slides & clips on the front on the garage. How do you overcome the heating problem? You purchase a gas fired heater. How do you overcome IT issues? Simply get our own engineers to devise a method of operating. How do you resolve Covid regs? We continually monitored and adjusted our procedures in accordance with requirements, in fact at the lowest point we simply had one operative on duty receiving & passing on the jobs.

Mental health treatment

As you may well imagine our clients were very pleased to have this service which only cost the value of materials used and if they wished a donation to a local charity. It was not long before someone mentioned their concern for the hospital staff dealing with Covid patients. As a result we checked with the NHS Hospital at Salisbury to see if we could donate specifically to support ALL their NHS Staff. They agreed to our proposal and incredibly in the last twelve months we have been able to provide £5,500 that is going to support them in the way of mental health treatment, rest room facilities, special treats etc.

Adventure

As for the work that has come in, recently we broke our one day record by receiving 23 jobs in a day. Our works cover every sphere of activity from electrics to electronics, ceramics to clocks, bikes to brass-work, mowers to metal-work etc.. We are very pleased that at present we are running at a 93% success rate.

Our story has no ending, we simply await the next exciting episode, the adventure is in the overcoming.

Repair Cafe volunteers are problem solvers – and so it is in Lover too! 

Het bericht Repair Cafe volunteers support local hospital during pandemic verscheen eerst op Repaircafe.