Free Repair Clinic
What is Repair Café?
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 volunteers with their tools to help you assess and make any repairs you need. On clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, sewing machines, knife sharpening, etc…
Us…
Our volunteers come with many years of experience in the trades, specialized professions or a lifetime of repairing household items. (Let’s call these special folks Tinkerers or Handy-Fixers)
The thing that all our volunteers share in common (we include all volunteers world-wide here) is the desire to see less items sent to landfills, the end to “planned obsolescence by manufacturers” and “right-to-repair” being a principle all peoples can live by with the items in their home. The deep satisfaction that comes to all our volunteers shows in their comments to others and their commitment to help.
You…
First step is that visitors bring their broken item from home. Are you afraid to take this item apart or unsure where to begin? Do you need some suggestions as to where and how to acquire a replacement part that is needed? Together with one of our volunteer specialists, we will do an assessment together to form a repair plan. It might be a simple replacement of a socket/switch on your favorite lamp, helping your vacuum work like new again or some suggestions on how to repair and restore “great-grandma’s rocking chair” that holds dear memories to you. Coming back to a future clinic with your newly purchased part may be a part of this repair plan, or you may now feel more confident to do the final repair of this item at your home.
Together…
Are you looking to volunteer to help out your neighbours and community with us? Let us help you become one of our Fixers. Come visit the next Repair Cafe Clinic and sit with some volunteers to watch and listen how they approach different projects.
Currently, there are over 4000 Repair Cafés world-wide. Come visit one in your area. Inquire about the “House Rules” we use at the Repair Cafés, such as a daily limit of items per family, a checklist of items to bring with your broken item or a list of Dangerous Items not allowed, etc.
Every Repair Café will have a Volunteer Coordinator who tries to read what his community needs. They try to match those needs with the volunteers that step forward, times and locations that encourage the public to attend and foster a friendly and welcoming environment.

Are you a Property Manager? Do you have a space for us in your building, library, church hall, community centre? We are so grateful when Boards of Directors and Managers see the benefit we bring to our communities and offer these spaces to help our local Repair Café grow.
Most Repair Café Clinics will leave a donation box on their registration table for any that wish to offer a contribution. None of the volunteers receive payment but these funds are used to buy small repair items (consumables) to aid in our work.
Why?...
As a society, we throw away vast amounts of stuff. Sometimes 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. Especially younger generations; they no longer know how to do that. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.
That’s why there’s Repair Café! People with repair skills get the appreciation they deserve. Invaluable practical skills are passed on. Paying It Forward is the greatest form of giving. 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; to appreciate their value. Many visit a local Repair Café and then return to their hometown with the desire to start a new, local chapter of Repair Café. Bonds of cooperation and friendship are built between neighbouring clinics. Repair Café volunteers may also visit local schools to give “repair lessons”. In many ways, the Repair Café helps change people’s mindset. This is essential to kindle people’s enthusiasm for a sustainable society.
Last but not least, the Repair Café wants to show how fun and satisfying repairing things can be, and how easy it often is. We invite you to visit your local Repair Café Clinic soon.
Worldwide movement
RepairCafe.org (est. 2010) meanwhile, forms a worldwide movement that strives to preserve repair skills in society and to promote more repairable products. Besides the Netherlands, there are Repair Cafés in Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, India, Japan and in dozens of other countries around the world. The web site of RepairCafe.org helps you to find a local clinic in your country and city. Searching on your local Social Media sites is a valuable source too.

Not competing with professional repair specialists

Repair Café sometimes gets asked whether access to free repair get-togethers is competing with professional repair specialists. The answer is; quite the opposite. Repair Cafés focus attention on the possibility of getting things repaired. Visitors are frequently advised to go to the few professionals still around.
Furthermore, people who visit Repair Cafés are not usually customers of repair specialists. They say that they normally throw broken items away because they find a professional repair too expensive. At the Repair Café they learn that you don’t have to throw things away; there are alternatives.

RepairCafe.org
(use the English Tab on the upper right of the screen)


www.RepairCafeNiagara.com

email: RepairCafeNiagara@gmail.com