The Natural Resources Committee has been partnering with the Wellesley Sustainable Energy Committee and the Wellesley Recycling and Disposal Facility to find new ways to implement the three “Rs”: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

The Rotary Club of Wellesley wants to add a fourth “R” – REPAIR to the program by announcing its first Repair Café event. The Café will be held on Saturday October 14, 9am – noon at the Wellesley Recreation Center, Room 008.

Repair Cafés are free meeting places that are all about repairing things (together) rather than tossing them out. At the Repair Café event, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make many effective repairs to clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, gadgets, toys, etc. You’ll also find volunteers with varying repair skills in all kinds of fields. There are currently over 1,300 Repair Cafés worldwide, with more communities joining regularly. This will be the first such event in Wellesley, and it should be a lot of fun.

Here’s how it works: Registered guest visitors bring their broken items from home. With the help of the volunteer specialists on site, they start analyzing the damage, deciding whether the repair can be done, and then picking up tools to attempt their repairs right there in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process for everyone. If you have nothing to repair, you can just drop by to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee while you watch and learn. Or you can even lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get some repair inspiration at the reading table – by leafing through available books on repairs and DIY.

To join in the learning and fun, and to learn much more about the event and how to participate, please register at the following link: Repair Café / Rotary Club of Wellesley. If you have an item to repair, just register to attend the Café as a guest by filling out the form at the bottom of the web page, and please list the item you want to repair in the comments section of the registration form – one item to a guest, please.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact John Adams at [email protected] or 617-817- 0314. If we can talk in detail about your repair before the event, then we can better plan to have the necessary parts and tools available for the repair. If you already have repair skills and want to help others out, please register as a volunteer on the website form; once again, the link is Repair Café / Rotary Club of Wellesley. Thank you for your interest and participation!