… collaboration and a ‘wonderful welcoming café’
‘It seems to create a great atmosphere!’
Next session: Saturday 26th April, between 10am and 1pm, at St Francis Church Hall on Woolbrook Road.
The Sidmouth Repair Café is very much a green initiative making an impact – as reported recently by the district council in its support for local community action groups:
One of the groups that has benefited from membership of Community Action Groups Devon is Sidmouth Repair Café, which last year prevented 1.35 tonnes of waste, avoided nearly three tonnes of carbon emissions and saved consumers over £9,000 by repairing electrical items like vacuum cleaners and radios and mending clothes, bags and teddy bears – all through volunteers’ time worth nearly £16,000. The café operates on the last Saturday of every month (except August and December) from St. Francis Church Hall in Sidmouth.
It’s also a very important social space. Here’s the press release for this month’s session:
Chairs, chairs, chairs
The last session of the Sidmouth Repair Café saw an unusual number of chairs being brought in for a little tlc.
Otherwise there was an extremely eclectic mix of general items (other than chairs!).
Examples being ornamental angels, vase, clocks, lamp, bathroom scales, watch, silver dish, a duck, tin, lamp base, toy, hose, drilling holes in garden pots, wooden bird, even opening a tin of paint!
Plus the usual kettles, nutribullet, vacuum cleaners, printers, TV, coffee pot, dehumidifier and phones.
As Repair Café volunteer Jenny says, “It’s always good to see the collaboration between the fixers in the room as they find solutions and also give advice to visitors along the way.”
It certainly shows not only what the volunteer team of fixers can do to help, but what sort of thing can be brought in to be looked at – which seems to be almost anything.
All of which helps save a little money and save things from ending up as land-fill.
And as Jenny adds, “As for our wonderful welcoming café with the best bacon butties ever and lots of folk sitting and chatting with their tea and cake, it seems to create a great atmosphere!”
Finally, in his back room, David had a huge number of tools to sharpen, having represented the Repair Café at the two Ecohub events last month looking at how to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, as featured in the Herald.
The team will be back again this coming Saturday 26th April, between 10am and 1pm, at St Francis Church Hall on Woolbrook Road.
Open to all and donations always welcome.
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