Olá a todos!
In this article, I will give some info about what is Repair Café? and why am I writing on this topic?
Repair Café is a meeting place and activity where people are getting together to teach and learn how to fix broken or non-operating goods, appliances, devices. The concept has arisen by a Dutch environmentalist lady, Martine Postma, in 2009 in Amsterdam, and it is getting bigger and bigger with nearly 3000 cafes only in Europe. Unfortunately, Portugal has only two, one in Lisbon. Albeit this number is for registered Repair Cafés. To join the community, you need to register yourself or your organization, which is not a big deal but being in a community is always a good hand to promote your work. There are bunch of Repair Cafés without any commitment as well. I am just sharing the general idea and info about it.
When I came last year for the short term project, firstly Justyna told me “Do what ever you want to do with this space (Oficina). Because we do not have someone (except Carlos) to use these tools.” At that moment a sparkle flashed, and the idea giving a training to teach the basic repair knowledge occurred in my mind and started to think about this. I have been fixing/repairing stuff since I was 6-7 years old and trying to teach some techniques to even my 4 year-old nephew (he stopped playing with his bunch of music instruments after he saw me I was fixing some electronic utensils with my tools). You cannot imagine such a lovely heart and a big smart a$$ brain he has :))
Anyway, while I was having the monthly mentoring session with Laura, she asked what I would like to do and I mentioned about my idea for giving training about repairing malfunctioned devices. Before our talk with Laura, a couple of weeks earlier, I was searching on the web on the subject of how can I do this kind of project? and encountered a video of which Martine, the mother of Repair Café idea, was giving a speech about the repair cafe. I watched some of the videos and have become so happy to see about this very successful project since I am sharing the same mind: REPAIR, DO NOT REPLACE!
Laura was and is so into the idea and she got up in no time to help me to develop the idea and convert it into a project. Because Rato – ADCC is an organization that maintains its existence with the idea of helping out people for social inclusion by using IT, and those people that we help generally financially poor people. This project could help to save some money for them by repairing their some broken utensils. A few months ago, she send me a document of the Repair Café of Lisbon and I started to search about them and contacted them. They started this project 7 years ago as FabLab, a great organization in Lisbon, which I heard even before searching about Repair Café. Later, I found out that the FabLab is a kind of sub-organization of Circular Economy Portugal. Check it out their web pages and see what they are achieving in sustainability topics such as waste prevention, reuse, repair and upcycling. Marta is the president of Circular Economy Portugal and she gave me a warm welcome and told all the story and showed me the building in which their office is located. I was not expecting that much but she was so nice and professional. I need to convey my thanks once again here. The main reason of my visit was exchanging ideas and creating a network for a possible partnership. They have a great experience on the topic and I wanted to learn strengths and struggles from their experience, so I have done more or less so far. I will maintain the story of my visit the Repair Café session for another article.
Without thinking whether this project will be accomplished or will not, I am going to put my effort to put it in practice anyway. I also will try to make a few training sessions at least. So, for now, I need to prepare another article 🙂
Até Próxima!!
