Repair Café Foyle

A bit of history

The first Repair Cafè was started in Amsterdam by Martine Postman in 2009.

Since then the movement has grown more and more!

In 2011 Martine founded the Repair Café Foundation, a non-profit organisation that has provided professional support to local groups in the Netherlands and other countries wishing to start their own Repair Cafè.

What exactly is a Repair Cafè?

A Repair Cafè is a meeting place, open to everyone and free, where people gather with the initial purpose to have something repaired.

You’ll find different teams of expert and skilled volunteers with tools and materials to help you make any repairs you need on clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera.

You’ll also find tea, biscuits and… coffee, to make you feel at ease and give you a chance to meet new people in a welcoming environment.

Building communities is one of our goals.

Knowing how to make repairs is an almost lost skill, especially younger generations no longer know how to do that. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again, instead of aiming at reducing and re-using.

This is the reason why Repair Cafès were created: “People with repair skills get the appreciation they deserve. Invaluable practical skills are passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products. It cuts CO2 emissions, for example, because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.”

One of our most recent success stories of fixing

The bluebird toy of this wee boy was not tweeting anymore, and one of our fantastic team fixers took care of it and fixed it.