REPAIR CAFE KOLDING BIRTHDAY PARTY X EYW

It was sun over the harbour, as Repair Cafe Kolding had invited friends, partners, curious and like-minded people for its 1-year birthday.

Repair Cafe Kolding is a local community of a world spread network of repair cafes run by volunteers who support the idea of ​​repairing rather than throwing out, extending the life of things and, as far as possible, avoiding buying new.

Volunteers have met once a month during the last year, where citizens have been able to bring the items, they would like help to get repaired and also got taught to repair themselves. The items that came the most were bicycles, clothes, vacuum cleaners, coffee machines, small electronics, projectors, small furniture and even a 3D printer. It’s free to get help and there’s always a cup of coffee ready.

In addition to the regular Repair Cafe evenings, which are open to everyone, Repair Cafe Kolding has made a very successful collaboration with Tobber’s Friends to restore small furniture together with a team of young people. The restored furniture has been put up for sale at Tobbers and the money from the sale goes directly back to lonely young people in Kolding.

Repair Cafe was started in May 2018 by Tina Klemmensen and now counts over a year later with more than 20 volunteers. This is the largest Repair Cafe in Denmark measured by the number of volunteers.

Birthday Party

The birthday speech for the 1-year celebration party was held by the chairman of the Technical and Climate Committee in Kolding Municipality: Jakob Ville. After the speech, the guests were presented to a visual version of Repair Cafe’s very first CO2 account, prepared by Svetlana Petrova (also voluntary in RC Kolding) and there was a quiz about the key figures from the report. By calculating our Ecological Footprint, the organization is able to learn about what each can do to tread more lightly on the Earth.

Annual Report

The most important numbers from there are:

• That the volunteers achieved a saving of 0.5 tonnes of CO2 by repairing instead of buying new.
• That the volunteers have a success rate of repairs as high as 89%!
• That the volunteers together put 1200 hours in the project. That the volunteers fixed 23 bikes!

The Annual Report showcases the ability to reduce the negative impact each of us implies on our planet and help us shape a sustainable policy.

Partners

The presentation ended with plans for the future. Repair Cafe Kolding from September becomes an association, officially an entity. While sausages were served from the grill (donated by Tobber’s Madbar) and cold beer (sponsored by Vestfyens Brewery), the jazz trio Verona played soft tones in the late afternoon (Jazz I Trekanten helped economically in regards to the live music).

Friends

Besides the guests from another repair cafe from Odense, there were also like-minded guests from Aarhus. Locals guests from Kolding also showed up with items under their arm, which they needed help to be repaired. All the items were checked and the people received help and advice from the fixers. In general, the mood and the sun were so good during the whole evening.

Photo credits: Kuba Cybula