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Calling Fixers, Tinkerers, Repairpeople ...

11/9/2017

10 Comments

 
Do you like to tinker around with tools? Do you have a repair skill? Do you want to help others in your community? If you answered yes, then we could use your help! The Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District (CVSWMD), in collaboration with the Onion River Exchange (ORE), is hosting Vermont’s first ever community Repair Café on January 20, 2018.

The CVSWMD and ORE are hosting Vermont's first Repair Café and we are looking for volunteers to help us make it happen.  We are seeking “fixperts” who can dedicate their time and experience to help us make these events successful. We would love to have a diverse group of fixperts to share their knowledge and to offer a variety of services to Repair Café participants. Examples of fixpert skills include (but are definitely not limited to): 
  • Sewers
  • Cobblers
  • Electronics repair
  • Clockmakers
  • Watchmakers
  • Bike repairs
  • Electronics repair
  • Small appliance repair
  • Carpenters
  • Welding
  • YOUR REPAIR SKILL
​
Repair Cafés are free meeting places that are all about repairing things (together). By volunteering your knowledge and expertise at a Repair Café, many positive benefits can be achieved. Valuable, practical knowledge is passed on and shared. Repairing is brought back into local society in a modern way. The amount of raw materials needed to make new products is reduced if we fix something instead of purchasing yet more poorly made new things. You get an opportunity to show off your unique skill and help inspire people in the process. Above all, participating at a Repair Café is fun and helps bring members of the community together! 

And, as an added bonus, if you are member of the Onion River Exchange timebank  you can receive community time credits for the hours that you spend as a fixer at the Repair Cafe.

We live in a society that revolves around consumption. We buy something, it breaks, we throw it out and buy a new one. This is the norm, but there are serious consequences with this cycle. The average American produces 4.4 pounds of trash per day most of which is sent to a landfill. But what if we could change this? We can and the solution is simple: repair.

As the Repair Café Organisation noted, few people think about the possibility of repairing an object. Typically, it’s more convenient to throw something out. Because of this, most people no longer know how to repair things and the people who do aren’t valued as they should be. However, it is these individuals who have the power to contribute towards making our society more sustainable.

If you'd like to join CVSWMD and ORE in our efforts to bring Repair Cafes to the region, contact us! 
Repair Cafes Sound Great! Sign Me Up to Help Out
10 Comments
Tim Hofstetter
11/10/2017 10:09:02 am

Who pays for materials / parts? Donated labor / skills is one thing, but donated materials / parts may be an issue.

Is there a plan for disposition of repaired merchandise that is never reclaimed? Perhaps a thrift-store sort of thing?

What happens if repairs are highly involved, or if secondary problems are discovered in the course of repairing the primary issue?

Where will items be stored before and after repairs?

How will items be tracked to their rightful owners? Documented serial numbers, "work orders", that sort of thing? Through a centralized item-accounting system or ad-hoc?

How many "Cafés" are planned? In which towns? Some volunteers may be travel-challenged, especially in winter.

Reply
Cassandra Hemenway link
12/15/2017 10:55:39 am

Hi Tim -- CVSWMD will provide a limited amount of common parts for this event, but typicaly we will expect the person who is getting the repair to get the parts for themselves. We are holding the cafe from 12 - 4 pm - during the hours of the local hardware store, so most folks can make a run to the hardware store if they need to during the event.

Most of your questions seem to be under the assumptions that folks are dropping off an item and then leaving for later pick up. that's not how a repair cafe works. Participants are expected to stick around, learn from the repairer, participate if that makes sense, absorb some knowledge, hang out with fellow community members etc. There will be an actual "cafe" with hot drinks and food and tables as well. But this is not modeled on a typical repair shop where an item is dropped off and later picked up.

Because we are not allowing folks to drop off materials and then leave, we do not expect unrepaired items to be left. If an item is not able to be repaired, we will tell folks about the CVSWMD Additional Recyclables Collection Center just down the road. If it's an item we don't take and can't be recycled, the participant is responsible for landfilling it.

Highly involved repairs obviously can't happen in the short time of this one-time event - every participant will sign a letter of understanding acknowleding that part of the deal. Often fixers might be able to make the repair later, for a fee - and our understanding is that most people are happy with that arrangement. Just sharing information about what is needed is the best that can happen for major repair needs. That's all we expect during the four hours of this cafe.

The Jan 20 cafe is the first of three we will be holding in the district. We have been learning a lot from our peers in other states who have been running these, and from the folks at the Repair Cafe Organisation. We have not yet scheduled the other two cafes, but we hope to hold one in the Hardwick area and one in the Bradford area.

Reply
Paul Fixx
12/15/2017 08:02:00 am

It seems to me that epair cafells will work best if the repairer and repairee work together. While done items may be repairable in a short time, in many cases the repairer may only be able to provide advice and/or guidance on next steps to take.

Reply
Cassandra Hemenway link
12/15/2017 10:57:11 am

Hi Paul - Yes! You're understanding of Repair Cafes is exactly what we have in mind. The point of the cafe is to share knowledge and skills with each other - to learn from the fixers and allow the fixers to share their knowledge. Not everything will be able to be repaired on this one day - that will be made clear to every participant with a signed agreement and we are still in the process of our extensive outreach efforts.

Reply
Ron Sweet
12/18/2017 08:15:00 am

Does the volunteer repairer bring his/her own tools?

Reply
Cassandra Hemenway link
12/18/2017 10:55:27 am

Hi Ron - Yes, the volutneer fixers should bring their own tools. but they are not made available to anyone else to use. We are going to be sending out a questionairre to all fixers to determine if there are parts or tools CVSWMD needs to supply as well.

Read this post to see more details about what's involved with volunteering as a fixer. It addresses tools in the second paragraph: http://www.cvswmd.org/waste-not/fixing-things-at-a-repair-cafe-read-this-first

Reply
Tim Hofstetter
12/18/2017 11:46:58 am

A questionaire isn't going to get that sort of information; it will all depend upon the individual repair. It would be senseless to buy a bunch of tools that never get used.

Example: A questionaire may indicate that few (or no) "fixers" for electronic equipment own their own oscilloscope or signal tracer. Looks like both pieces of equipment would be good for CVSWMD to buy, right? Well, no. Although both pieces of equipment would be handy for certain very specific types of repairs, it's entirely possible that those types of repairs never appear in a "repair cafe"... and would sit, collecting dust, for years. The repairer cannot know whether they might actually need either piece of equipment until they're elbows-deep in a repair for which that equipment is appropriate.

The same would apply for all manner of other repair. We simply cannot know before the fact what might and might not be called for.

Cassandra Hemenway link
12/18/2017 12:33:49 pm

Hi Tim - We are working on our outreach email to fixers which will address all of this. Obviously CVSWMD is not going to purchase obscure tools that we'll never use again - the reality of a repair cafe is that some things will be able to be fixed and some will not. If the tools are not available on-site for the job, then certain things won't be repaired. We are assuming (hoping) that fixers will bring their own tools -- the ones we may be able to supply will be limited, the kinds of equipment we had in mind were small parts, wire for lamps etc -- but most folks will be directed to the local hardware store if a part for thier item is not available at the cafe. I apologize that perhaps I was not as clear as I could have been in my earlier post about that. You will be hearing from us shortly with more information.

Reply
Where in the World is Karla link
12/8/2020 11:14:27 am

Great blog yoou have here

Reply
Tim Hofstetter
12/8/2020 11:40:40 am

Playing Lazarus' Echo today... do I presume correctly that these "Repair Cafés" are long since obsolete? The concept seemed pleasant but impractical, and especially now during COVID Year 1 is completely impracticable. Probably ditto for COVID Years 2 through 5.

BTW... the CAPTCHA thing on this page doesn't work worth Shinola, at least not in the Chrome browser. It's clipped at either the top or the bottom, so we can't see either the instructions at the top or the button at the bottom.

Reply



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    Cassandra Hemenway, CVSWMD Outreach Manager,  Theron Lay-Sleeper, Outreach Coordinator and Dora Chi, CVSWMD's Eco AmeriCorps service member all contribute to this blog.

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