Repair Café comes to our corner of Columbia County
Pictures from the event!
Got a toaster that won’t toast? Jeans with a torn seam? Chair with a loose leg? Toss it? No Way!
All summer long, Climate Smart Committees from New Lebanon, Chatham, Canaan, Austerlitz and East Nassau collaborated to bring Repair Café to our region, Saturday, Oct.23, 2021, 10-4 pm at the New Lebanon Fire House, 523 US 20, New Lebanon, NY. Covid protocols for gatherings will be observed.
A Repair Café event is a free for all community and volunteer-run activity. Whether you have a broken lamp, or a chair leg that needs mending, a Repair Café can help divert items from going to the landfill, teach lifelong valuable fixing skills and bring neighbors together to help one another.
The volunteer fixers for the upcoming Repair Café are skilled in sewing, darning, carpentry work, basic electrical repairs, bikes, computer software, shoes, jewelry, ceramics, and leather goods. Ben Jose who is a volunteer fixer said, “I’m a fixer, and happy to help people with their cherished, but broken belongings.”
The idea of a community event where volunteers fix their neighbors broken items for free was born 12 years ago in Amsterdam when Martine Postma, was troubled by the amount of trash that was filling landfills. Instead of throwing broken items away, she started a movement where handy neighbors fixed broken items at regularly scheduled events. The first Repair Café to hit New York was in 2013 in New Paltz. Now, there are more than 30 Repair Cafes in communities throughout the Hudson Valley and upstate NY. John Wackman, and Elizabeth Knight, both pioneers in the Repair Movement, wrote the book Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, available in the New Lebanon Public Library and Chatham Libraries.
More information, or to volunteer to repair or to help with the project:
Adelia Moore (adeliamoore@gmail.com) New Lebanon
Wendy Dwyer (missmisc@icloud.com) Canaan
Cara Humphrey (carasoup07@gmail.com) Austerlitz
Press contact: Cara Humphrey (carasoup07@gmail.com) 914-475-1395