Chamber of Commerce urges support for first Repair Café

WARWICK - Is any gadget in your house broken?
This Saturday, Nov. 19, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. people with technical skills, will be available for computer trouble shooting, sewing repairs, knife and tool sharpening, wooden and mechanical toy, non-upholstered furniture, small appliance, and lamp repairs.
They're all volunteers and they're called repair coaches.
On Thursday, Nov. 10, Town of Warwick Supervisor Michael Sweeton, Orange County Legislator Barry Cheney, Mayor Michael Newhard and members of the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce joined these repair coaches along with members of Sustainable Warwick and Community Center Directors to support the Orange County first Repair Café.
And this Saturday everyone is invited to bring a broken item to the Warwick Valley Community Center, 11 Hamilton Ave, lower level, in the Village of Warwick.
Knowledgeable volunteers, some of whom are professional technicians, will work with you to repair your broken whatever. And if they don't think that the repair can be made that day, they'll tell you why and what parts to purchase and bring with you at the next monthly Repair Café.
The volunteer coaches bring their own tools and offer repairs at no cost to you. But you are expected to pay for parts and donations are cheerfully accepted to help purchase additional supplies.
The Café Repair volunteers cannot guarantee that your item will be repaired but lots of broken things will get fixed for free. In any event, everybody will have fun and perhaps an interesting story to tell. But the good news is that lots of items will soon be up and running rather than in the junk pile.
The Repair Café idea was born in Amsterdam in 2009. Repair Café New Paltz was one of the first in the United States, and others followed in the Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, Gardiner, Rhinebeck, Kingston, Beacon, and Rosendale.
Sustainable Warwick is sponsoring a Repair Café locally in order to support reuse and recycling. For more information about the Repair Café concept, visit http://www.repaircafehv.org/#welcome1 or www.sustainablewarwick.org. If you'd like to volunteer your repair skills, contact Elizabeth Knight@ 845-544-1056; eknight@teawithfriends.com.