Repair Café at HackLab – Awesome Collaboration!


Video by Lon Appleby

Our monthly Repair Café on February 21 was a Saturday that started with heavy snow. But the broken streetcars and slow traffic didn’t hamper the enthusiasm of our volunteers and visitors. Within half an hour, the HackLab was filled with people. This short video above was taken when we were half way into this four-hour event. You can get a sense of the action yourself just by watching it!

Below is a small sample of the many positive comments we received about our collaboration at the Repair Café.

“I knew it was going to be great. But this (event) was even better than I expected!” said Alex, who volunteered for the first time as a guide.

“I fixed this vacuum cleaner, which had presented a tough problem, but was solved by multiple heads and hands!” said John, our appliance fixer, who brought his brother to volunteer for this café.

“Today’s café was in a smaller space. But I needed and got a specialized electronic part for testing from the HackLab which wouldn’t be available in an ordinary location,” said Paul, an electronics fixer.

“I learned new things from talking to other fixers while working on the laptop together.” smiled Derek, a first-time volunteer, who is a computer professional.

Our dedicated team of fixers worked hard in helping our many visitors. The following photo was taken an hour after the event. Our fixers and HackLab were still working together on a motherboard!

 Collaboration at HackLab

Fixing a motherboard

We are thankful for the continued support of our wonderful volunteers. It is great to have new volunteers joining our team. We are also grateful to have our long-time volunteers who have been helping the Repair Café since our early days in 2013. They are the true enduring force behind the success of each Repair Café. Below are Robert and Judy, two of the amazing volunteers we are lucky to have.

Robert and Judy

Many thanks to our host and collaborator HackLab for the terrific space and snacks and most importantly for sharing your great creativity with our team. We would like to thank Frank’s Pizza House for your generous donation of pizzas and also Humewood Coffee Group and Rustic Cosmo Café for your wonderful baked goods.

If you missed the February Repair Café, our next one is March 21. We will be back at Skills for Change. Please refer to the Upcoming Events page. Hope to see you there!