My journey to becoming a Repair Café Volunteer started with an accidental conversation and I haven’t regretted a bit of it since. The Repair Café has given me what I was looking for – the opportunity to volunteer with a local organisation, meet new people and give something back to the community. Whilst attending an event at the Foxlowe, I got chatting to a lady sat next to me about an advertisement in the programme for the Leek Repair Cafe. By coincidence, she also volunteered there, and she explained what they do. It sounded just up my street; I attended the first Repair Cafe and fell in love with the idea that I could use my electronic and electrical repair skills again. So much so, that I also began volunteering with Biddulph Repair Cafe as well.
I specialise in electrical and electronic equipment repair, typically handling items such as domestic small white goods, hi-fi equipment, garden tools, domestic lighting and all manner of things in between. I particularly enjoy repairing vintage hi-fi equipment. I guess I’ve got form on this. From a very early age, I was fascinated by the way the world worked and would be constantly taking electrical and electronic items apart to examine them. I would read the Radio Spares electronics catalogues at bedtime when most other children were reading the Famous Five books. I studied electrical engineering and electronics at the University of Liverpool, moved into mobile phone manufacturing, then IT infrastructure and now IT architecture design.
Visualising the world and how machines work – and using that image to problem-solve is intensely satisfying. Unfortunately, many manufacturers now make it very difficult to repair their items, so some that come in to us are always going to be a challenge; either because service manuals are not available or the equipment relies on understanding the software that runs it. Printers, for example, are generally very challenging. However, many of the repairs I carry out are actually quite straightforward, such as replacing a fuse, a flexible cable, fitting a new plug, or re-soldering a broken wire. Without these simple fixes the item would be destined for the scrapheap, but for many manufacturers, it's often uneconomical for them to do the repair themselves; the repair cafés fill that gap and quickly breathe new life into many items.
It's a great feeling when you can repair an item for the cost of a single component such as a new capacitor, which otherwise would have cost hundreds of pounds to replace a whole circuit board or even the whole appliance. In some cases, the component needed to repair one item has been scavenged from another that was unrepairable, so the cost is zero.
I find volunteering extremely rewarding. My day job is fully remote, working from home, and some weeks it can feel like I'm a bit of a hermit. So, meeting like-minded volunteers at weekends to work towards a common goal gives me an opportunity to talk to other volunteers and our clients.
It's a great opportunity for me to polish and revive skills that I'm not using during my later working life. Not only do I find the repair café is good for my own mental health, it’s also obviously extremely rewarding to see happy clients returning home with items that otherwise would have been destined for the scrapheap. We’ve had a few examples where our repairs have had a significant impact on the welfare and comfort of underprivileged families, or where the item has great sentimental value. These instances make it even more special!
It is inevitable that people may be anxious about attending a repair café to volunteer and help repair items. I know you’ll find that we are all a very friendly bunch of people, all with a common goal in mind. The skills of my fellow repairers, including the textile workers are awesome but everybody has something that they can contribute, so don't think that your skills are not good enough.
There are plenty of other areas you could get involved in, either as a repairer or front of house meet and greet. I've always said that "You don't realise how big your comfort zone is until you step outside it", so it's really important just to go for it, turn up, talk to people, and get involved. Your skills could make a significant impact on the life of others as well as improving the sustainability of our beautiful planet.