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  • Bridgewater’s first repair café was a success! 🎉

    Thank you for making the November 15th repair café event a success!🙏

    Some people got their belonging fixed then stayed around to just chat with their neighbours around a cup of coffee or tea.

    We got about 32 items fixed over the course of three hours. Thank you to the fixers and the team members who contributed and helped making this special time happen! 🙂

    So what was going on at the November 15th event?

    🪡 Sewing: A few fixers were at the event to get clothes mended and buttons sewed back up. We also had a sewing-machine repair station!

    🚲 Bike repair: A few guests came to get their bikes adjusted or fixed.

    🔌 Electrical items: The busiest table! Four people were assisting with small appliance fixes. They managed to get a few items fixed, among which a toaster manufactured during the 1930’s! Given the number of guests who came to see us with a small appliance item, we’ll try to gather more fixers of that kind next time around.

    🪑 Furniture and toys: Furnitures and hand bags(!) were fixed during our event.

    💻 Computers: A few computers were fixed during these three hours. For those that were not, instructions about what next steps to take were given to guests.

    🎸 Guitars: Our guitar fixer and musician was here to help fellow guitarists.

    ♻️ Angela from Region 6 Solid Waste management attended this event. She provided information and insights on reduction, recycling and reuse.

  • Some numbers about the Mahone Bay Repair Café event

    The Mahone Bar Repair café earlier this month was a success! Lots of people showed up, to get something repaired or just out of curiosity. In any case, this was a great oppotunity to socialize with neighbours and friends around a cup of coffee.

    If you have a Facebook account, you can check out photos taken at the event here.

    We also gathered some statistics about what ended up being repaired or not. We compiled them and here they are, on this chart. We’re still working out the best way to capture this type of data: we know that the reporting of a couple of repaired items fell through the cracks. However, these numbers paint a good picture of what the impact of this event was.

    Like at the Riverport event back in March, the knife and tool sharpening station was a very popular one! Two people were operating it and they were busy the entire time. These numbers also show that items brought to the small appliance tables were not often fixed: as we noticed during past events, some items are unfortunately beyond repair or they can require a follow-up with a professional party.

    We’ll keep capturing this type of statistics, with hope that they’ll highlight adjustments to make for future events.