The Year End Reflection
2024 was our second year of implementing the distributed model of Repair Café. Following a successful year of launching the new strategy in 2023, we further increased our repair activities in 2024. With the combined efforts of Repair Café Toronto, our community repair leaders and various local community organizations, we delivered a total of 140 repair events in 40 different locations in 2024, compared to the 72 repair events offered in 24 locations in 2023. In other words, what we accomplished in 2024 was almost double of what we delivered in 2023!
We were glad to see that our strategy that focuses on encouraging and supporting our volunteers and other community groups to organize Repair Café has proven to be working well, particularly among younger people — we are seeing an increasing number of young volunteers joining our events throughout the city.
A big shout out to our volunteers who have become community repair leaders and shown great leadership in organizing Repair Cafés or repair workshops since 2023. Last year, two new community repair leaders emerged from our volunteers. One of them was Alan who started the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) Repair Café. And the other was Khadije who started a special kind of Repair Café at her local community centre, Oakwood Vaughan Community Hub, for seniors and students. See below to learn more about Alan’s and Khadije’s initiatives.
Two New Community Repair Leaders
Alan: Build it and they will come.
Q: Alan, what motivated you to start a Repair Café with CNIB?
A: The Repair Café is a perfect fit for the CNIB. I have been fixing items for blind and visually impaired friends for years so the expansion to a formal RC was the next step.
Q: Where is your location? How is it supported?
A. In Toronto, there are two CNIB locations, including the GTA Community Hub on Yonge north of St Clair, which is central and easily accessible by transit. CNIB, in cooperation with CCB Visionaries (a peer run organization), arranged for The Hub to be available for RC events. Both CNIB and CCB promote the events and provide volunteers.
Q: Who are the CNIB RC for? What do you fix? For those who volunteer or visit for the first time, what should they expect?
A: The primary target audience is blind and visually impaired people with a focus on accessibility devices. These include anything from white canes, talking watches, talking book readers to the ubiquitous braillers (a typewriter for Braille). Of course everything breaks so the usual plethora of items is accepted too. The CNIB takes pre-registration and those people get priority. Walk-ins are welcome too.
Q: Are there any tips you can share with other individuals who are considering to start a Repair Café in their community?
A: Fixers and outside volunteers are shown how to work with blind and visually impaired people, basically like anyone else except for guiding if needed. Braillers are new to the fixers so they are shown how to dismantle, clean and lubricate them. Most other accessibility devices are just variations on existing devices.
For anyone considering starting another Repair Café, go for it. Build it and they will come. Promotion of the events determines how many clients will show up. After the first couple of events at CNIB, we adjusted the schedule to fit the demand. Maybe start another niche event such as catering to people in a certain language or culture or a certain sport.
Khadije: The young generation does not know much about clothing alterations, not even basic hand sewing.
Q: How did you get started with offering your Repair Café at Oakwood Vaughan Community Hub and what kind of repair service is being offered?
A: I was looking for ways to help my community early last year. By coincidence, I heard about the opening of a new organization for seniors near me. It is Oakwood Vaughan Community Hub. Of course I joined them from Day One. Then they asked me if I wanted to be a volunteer. I agreed right away. I became deeply involved with them. When they were planning for new programs, I saw an opportunity. Being part of Repair Café, I suggested to run clothing alterations as free service for seniors once a month.
Q: How does it work?
A: At each event, I help the seniors with all kind of alterations, like taking in or adding fabric to make it wider, shortening a dress or a skirt, hemming a pant, sometimes hand sewing if I don’t have a sewing machine available. I try to explain what I am doing and I let them prepare the job, using the seam ripper or doing some basting.
Q: What are you doing for 2025?
A: I have a new weekly initiative with Grade 6 students teaching them how to sew by hand and by machine beginning this January 2025. I am aware that the young generation does not know much about clothing alterations, not even basic hand sewing. At my first meeting with them, I will start with showing them a few beginner techniques, including how to thread the needle, do one kind of stitch and make a knot at the end.
Q: How do you feel about your initiative?
A: Everyone really appreciates my service. It seems my ambition to help my community is being achieved.
Our Repair Movement: From Global to Local
Inspired by the first Repair Café held in Amsterdam in 2009, RCT offered our first community Repair Café in Toronto in 2013. In the past 15 years, more new repair cafes were created in different parts of the world. Today, there are over 3,200 repair cafes globally.
As the longest running RC in Canada, we believe community repair is playing an important role in influencing our government’s policy on reducing waste and protecting consumers’ right to repair the products they own.
Last June, the federal government, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, conducted a consultation on the right to repair home appliances and consumer electronics for Canadians. In response, RCT provided our submission with comments and suggestions from many of our volunteers. Thanks to our volunteer Ken, along with our co-founder Fern, for gathering and compiling the submission on behalf of RCT!
RCT also shared over 4,277 records of electrical and electronic items we had repaired from the past eight years with Open Repair Alliance (ORA). ORA analyzed the data shared by repair community organizations from different countries to inform the right to repair advocacy and promote sustainable product design and extend the product life span through repairing. Big shoutout to our volunteer Dave for the work on this.
Ralph Thornton Repair Hub Project
RCT supported the applied research project titled “The Ralph Thornton Repair Hub: Transforming the Community through Repairing” led by Seneca Polytechnic and the Ralph Thornton Community Centre (RTCC). The Repair Hub program was created as an innovative solution to help RTCC address its challenge of connecting with its diverse populations and providing the support to meet their increasing needs for social programs. The program consisted of three free community events, including Repair Café, Laptop Repair Workshop and Small Appliance Repair Workshop were held on the Sunday afternoons in April of 2024. The research was designed to evaluate the impact of the events through event registration forms, Repair Café satisfaction survey, the pre- and post-workshop surveys. Both the participant turnouts for the events and the response rates of the surveys were high. Based on the feedback received and the analysis of the data collected, the Repair Hub program has proven to be helpful for RTCC in multiple areas, including community development, waste reduction, and repair education and training. As well, a social media and marketing campaign was implemented to promote the events and the effectiveness of different promotion channels were analyzed. Among the different methods used in the social media and marketing campaign to promote the community events, RCT’s event calendar reached out to the largest number of participants and visitors from the community and the public.
You can find out more about this study and its findings in the final project presentation below.
Looking to 2025
RCT will continue to grow our community with the distributed model. As more organizations are reaching out for help to offer Repair Cafés, we are happy to assist in areas such as volunteer recruitment and provide advice on event planning.
As you can see from Alan and Khadije’s examples above, Repair Café can serve different communities based on the needs of the communities. This year, we will spotlight a few community-led events with with the theme, “What does your repair event look like?”
There is increasing interest from our community members in learning how to repair broken household items. We are planning to provide more repair workshops led by our fixers. As always, stay tuned for the coming announcements and updates about repair events in the city throughout 2025.
You are welcome to sign up for volunteering as a fixer or general volunteer. Or if you need help with fixing your broken household items, feel free to bring it to the next Repair Café. Just check our Event Calendar. Hope to see you there!
Happy repairing 2025!
