Gravesham Repair Café

Housebuilder Bellway London, which is building new homes at Harbour Village in Northfleet, has made a contribution of £500 to our non-profit Repair Café. Bellway people visited our December Repair Café to see our work and celebrate the award. We are of course enormously grateful.  It's donations like this that allow us to keep a stock of the tools and materials we need to effect the repairs for our visitors. Cameras flashed on the day.  Here are some of the views seen by Bellway.

Late last year Gravesham Friendly launched a competition called “Have Your Say” allowing members of the public to vote for how the Society should invest in the people of the area.  The voting options were for organisations that support the community. When the votes were counted it was a draw between Gravesham Sanctuary, who provide help to the homeless, and ourselves Gravesham Repair Café.  Three voters won Amazon vouchers and one individual gained the iPad that was offered as an incentive for people to vote. Both main winners receive a financial award to help sustain their community work over the next three years. Gravesham Repair Café are absolutely delighted to be the recipients of this generous grant from Gravesham Friendly.  This will enable us to expand and consolidate our activities by providing the residents of Gravesham with a service that repairs all manner of items like small domestic electrics, bikes, clocks, tech, clothing and much much more.  Our Repair...

Are you or your children looking forward to the better weather for cycling? Why not get your bike or bikes given the once over by our expert repairers.  It's free of charge after all.   Brakes, tyres, punctures, loose chains, whatever.  Make sure you are safe on the road. The same applies to e-bikes but our insurance does not allow us to work on the electrics.  Sorry - not e-scooters. You know where to find us:  Gravesend, St Georges church hall on the first Thursday of the month and Vigo Village Hall on the second Saturday of the month. see our Calendar

As usual we received quite a number of items for repair. Cassette/radio players, bikes, food mixers, laptop computer, electronic music keyboard, digital radios and more besides.  One of the bikes was donated to us after its service and we'll pass it along to someone in need. One member demonstrated her talents with clay, making pottery key fobs; someone new helped with the tea and biscuits; and two visitors volunteered to return next time and help with the repair work.  An altogether successful day again. This author was so busy mending things there was little time to get photos done.  But here they are:

This was probably our busiest Vigo event yet. A couple more Vigo residents have offered to join our team of repairers which is excellent.  We're still on the lookout for more to help.  If you can spare one Saturday a month and have a knack for mending things, please get in touch.  Professional skills aren’t required, just a bit of experience and the willingness to be helpful.  You'll make new friends too! So this time we had more clocks that we could cope with - large and small, mechanical and battery.  We also had Christmas tree lights, two vacuum cleaners, a 1960s record player, even a chain saw that won't start - and more besides.  There was even a camera shy teddy bear requiring a stitch-in-time. Some photos of the day: Sometimes our volunteers donate serviceable items they no longer want or need.  We call it our table of kindness.  Anyone is welcome to help themselves to whatever they want. And we mustn't forget the hard work of those local l...

Goodness, this was a busy event! We had so many visitors with items for repair that the free Tea & biscuits was appreciated by those having to wait. We attended to numerous clocks (one of them huge),  two table lamps, a guitar amplifier, a laminator machine, an electronic keyboard, hair straighteners, a teddy bear, items of clothing, a laptop charger, a vacuum cleaner ... and more.  

Happening just after the New Year holiday it was little surprise that we had fewer visitors than usual.  Yet we had a good selection of items for attention in particular a lot of clothing to be repaired. So we had a wall clock as well as a carriage clock, a HiFi amplifier that had seen better days, a jammed Walkman, a kettle that wouldn't keep going, a weather  station and... Our usual photographer couldn't attend so we've only a few snaps this time.