Repair Café International has made every effort in the COVID year 2020 to continue to stimulate enthusiasm for repairing and to emphasize its importance. So writes the foundation in its annual report 2020.
Repair Café International encouraged its international network to adapt services during the pandemic, for example by offering online repair help or organizing pick-up and drop-off services. The foundation also actively promoted the Repair Café concept and repair in a broad sense to the world in 2020, through online marketing, interviews, lectures, presentations, presence on panels, discussion groups and other sessions.
Preventing volunteers from dropping out
In all these ways, the foundation wanted to prevent broken items from being unjustly thrown away during the pandemic. It also wanted to prevent volunteers from dropping out and not returning to their Repair Café after the pandemic.
“For the repair of many products, you can currently only go to a Repair Café”, says director Martine Postma. “This vulnerable infrastructure must be protected. It would be a great shame if the pandemic were to wipe out Repair Cafés.”
Resilience of the Repair Café network
The scope for community repair was very limited in 2020. But the drive and resilience of the Repair Café network was heart-warming, writes chairman Joanna van der Zanden in the foreword to the annual report. “Repair Café volunteers are doers, problem solvers who don’t throw in the towel, but in the face of adversity put their shoulders to the wheel together. That quality is what makes the Repair Café network so strong.”
Download the annual report 2020
Want to know what else Repair Café International has accomplished in 2020? Download the annual report (in Dutch), or read the English summary:
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