Napier Repair Café: working together to make a difference in the Hawkes Bay
Maree with her fixed lamp.
Busy repair day.
Repair Cafés are a great way for churches to live out their care for creation in practical, community-focused ways. They reduce waste, build relationships, and promote a culture of repair and restoration – all values that align deeply with our faith. Supporting or volunteering at a local Repair Café is one way Eco Churches can take meaningful climate action while engaging with their wider community. Maree Diamond, a member of the Care of Creation group in the Catholic Parish of Napier, volunteers once a month at the Napier Repair Cafe. In this story, she shares about the Café and her involvement.
About the Napier Repair Café:
The Napier Repair Café runs on the last Saturday of the month, from February to November, 11.30am–2.30pm, at Asher Hall, 1 Dalton Street, Napier. I volunteer there once a month and absolutely love it! In June we celebrated our 3rd birthday. Helen Howard started the Repair Café because she believes it’s important to extend the life of products and keep things out of landfill. Skill sharing, community connection, and building resilience were – and still are – big parts of why it all began.
There is free entry and the repair is paid by koha. There is a cafe, where for a small koha you can get delicious baking, courtesy of volunteers, and coffee or tea. There is a Tamariki Zone to keep the children occupied. There is a 'Sustainable Library' where people can borrow books about DIY, climate change, repair, minimalism, gardening and zero waste for free and return them to the café the following month.
I help out on the front counter, where I meet and greet the people and show them how to complete their form. Then I take them through into the hall and to one of the wonderful repair volunteers to assist them. Once the item has been looked at and/or repaired, we record on the form whether it has been able to be repaired or not. If not, why not? Does it need a part that will need to be sourced before it can be repaired at the following month's cafe? Sadly sometimes things are irreparable. But it’s great that we tried instead of just throwing the item away!
What Can Be Repaired?
The repairers are all highly skilled volunteers who can fix all sorts of things. From electrical items, to clothing and textiles, jewellery, knife sharpening, bike repairs and general goods - anything from a broken china doll to a furniture leg. People are encouraged to sit with the repairers so they can maybe learn something as well. The volunteers love to hear the story behind the objects people bring in, especially old items.
Our Impact
After each café, we get an email with some stats. For example:
23 volunteers (including bakers!)
42 people brought in 92 items
77 were repaired – a fantastic 83.6% repair rate
The estimated replacement value of those items was $3510
Why It Matters
The Napier Repair Café is a fantastic place to volunteer. Being concerned about our throw-away culture I can really help make a difference. I love that we all have the same ethos. There is wonderful buzz around the hall and it gives us all great pleasure to see something repaired and saved from heading to landfill.
The skills of the volunteers are amazing. Too many items that could be repaired end up in landfill, as people either don't have the time or they don't have the skills to repair them so here are people who have a talent and are happy to give up 4 hours a month and use their expertise to help ‘save the planet!’
The Bigger Picture
The Napier Repair Café is supported by Repair Café Aotearoa New Zealand. They support 40 Repair Cafe’s running throughout NZ. They have also produced a Repair Café Handbook which has information about how to set up and run a Repair Café and hold regular online hui for people that run Repair Cafe’s to connect with each other.
Sustainable Napier, is a volunteer run organisation that has a kaupapa of community connection, inclusiveness, building resilience and waste minimisation. Helen set up the Napier Repair Café under Sustainable Napier as she wanted to add other projects under that banner like a tool library, community gardens etc but turns out the Repair Café is a lot of work on its own! Being involved with the Repair Café has been a great way for people from the Catholic Parish in Napier to collaborate with others in the community to make a difference caring for God’s Creation!
More photos from the Repair Café can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/sustainablenapier/
Books in our 'Sustainable Library' - Borrow and return, keep, or pass on to friends or whānau.