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IMG 6130Last October, our Repair Café joined in the international birthday celebrations for the Repair Café movement. It was great that our Haregate event took place almost to the day of the movement’s 15th birthday. The world’s first repair café was held by Dutch journalist Martine Postma in the Hague on 18 October, 2009. Since then, the movement has spread around the world.

The Moorlands Repair Café came a bit later, being launched on 5 March, 2022 but, to be fair, MCA had only been going for less than three years. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength and this summer went on tour with events in Cheadle and Warslow.

At our most recent Repair Café at the Foxlowe this November, the team were joined by filmmakers from Staffs County Council to record a short video and also by Gemma from Waste Savvy Staffordshire, who launched the Rescue Me project. This was their first pop up stall, where there was a huge range of toys, baby items, books, pictures, mirrors and bric-a-brac, all rescued from the household recycling centre. These were available for donations, which all went straight to Leek Food Bank.

The Repair Café has been the brainchild of our coordinator, Mike Jones (pictured here with grandson, Alfie), aided by a dedicated team of expert repairers and admin volunteers. He’s now busy organising new venues for next year, in addition to our regular Foxlowe and Haregate ones. Watch this space and their Facebook page!