Repair Cafe 2023
Toss it? No way! Bring your beloved but broken item to the Repair Cafe. Learn to repair! Repair to learn!
Repair Cafe is a not-for-profit, community-meeting place to bring beloved, but broken items to be repaired, for free!* Our “repair coaches” are guys and gals, with significant skills, who generously volunteer their time and talent to help keep things out of the landfill.
Warwick’s Repair Cafe is open to all no matter where they live. It’s about fixing things — lamps & small electrics, ceramics and glass, clothing & textiles, soft toys, jewelry, bikes, things made of wood, knife, scissor & tool sharpening, — together! Limit two items per person. No gas or propane-powered items. We offer lamp and bike parts at our cost.
Warwick’s Repair Cafe is located at the Senior Center, Town Hall complex, 132 Kings Highway, the third Saturday of every OTHER month, from 10:00 AM-2:00 PM.
MISSION:
To transform our throw-away economy, one beloved item at a time
To reduce how much stuff goes into the waste stream
To preserve traditional repair know-how & skills, & pass them on
To show people who have this knowledge that they are valued
To feed curiosity about “how things work,” & have fun!
To build community & sustainability
WHEN? The Third Saturday of every OTHER month from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
WHERE? Senior Center—Warwick Town Hall Complex, 132 Kings Hwy., Warwick, NY
Mark your calendar for these 2023 Saturday dates:
March 18
May 20
July 15
September 16
November 18
If you’d like to volunteer your repair skills, donate baked goods, or help organize, contact Joan Maxwell via email. organizerwarwickrepaircafe@aol.com
While we can’t guarantee that your item will be repaired, everybody has fun, and often, an interesting story to tell. A lot of things that people love or need go home with happy people rather than tossed and trucked to a landfill.
Watch the video made about Repair Cafe by a WVHS student.
The Repair Cafe idea was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2009. Repair Cafe New Paltz, NY was the second (2013) in the United States. Today, there are 40 in the Hudson Valley/Catskills. Warwick’s was Orange County’s first (2016), today there are 7. For more information visit repaircafehv.org. Sustainable Warwick supports the Repair Cafe in order to promote reuse and recycling.
“Sustainable Warwick has been happy to support the Repair Café. SW’s goals are to increase understanding of the planet’s resources and minimize waste; support renewable energy, efficiency and conservation; support alternatives to plastics and other toxic chemicals; celebrate creativity and community spirit; and emphasize dialogue and collaboration. The Repair Café exemplifies those goals, as it enables people to reuse items instead of tossing them in the landfill and buying new ones, which would require new materials and energy to produce. Community connection and collaboration shine at the RC, where people chat, share stories, and learn from the repair coaches and from each other.”
“I have always had a waste not, want not spirit, but reducing my carbon footprint in a fun and creative way and inspiring others to do the same, is my small contribution to global warming. Sustainable Warwick and specifically the Repair Cafe were one part of why I moved my family from Montclair, New Jersey to Warwick. Even if I change one person’s outlook on consumerism or turn trash back into treasure, I feel I’ve made a difference, so I’ll keep coming back.”
2nd Anniversary of the Warwick Repair Café. Received awards certificates from the county, town and village.
In Memoriam of a Leader
John Wackman founded one of the first Repair Cafes in the United States: in New Paltz, New York State and helped to start Repair Cafes in the entire Hudson Valley. For many years, he acted as coordinator, communicator and cheerleader for Repair Cafes in the Hudson Valley, Catstkills, and the Capital District of New York, as well as for the repair movement globally.
In 2018, John spent his summer holiday in the Netherlands, where he participated in several Repair Cafes. He also visited Repair Cafe International Foundation in Amsterdam and spoke with Martine Postma about his ideas to spread Repair Cafe further and strengthen the international repair movement. Later that year, he co-presented with Martine at the Drawdown Learn Conference at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.
On 27 October 2020, John and co-writer Elizabeth Knight, published the book Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture. In this book, John and Elizabeth explore repairing in the broadest sense of the word. They focus on the community repair experience, the wisdom of repair, the sustainable aspects of repairing, the adventure of opening a device and seeing what’s inside, the right to repair that is being increasingly advocated internationally – and much more!
"John was one of our most prominent contacts in the United States", says Martine Postma. "He had a real passion for repair and Repair Cafe. He was a wonderful repairer, organizer and communicator, but more importantly, a warm, kind and wonderful person. The repair movement will miss him terribly."