About us

What are we?  Where are we?

We are the Repair Café for Jersey (Channel Islands), a community initiative run by a joint group of over 80 volunteers to help fellow Islanders repair their broken household items - FREE!  Events usually held every 3 weeks.

The Repair Café movement started in the Netherlands in 2009 when journalist Martine Postma decided that she wanted to do something about all the 'stuff' that we throw away each year instead of repairing.  In 2010 she started the first Repair Café in Amsterdam.  

Jumping forward 10 years, our very own Max (left) proposed the idea in St. Brelade, Jersey and with the help of Simon, we launched the St. Brelade Repair Café in October 2020 on International Repair Day.   We ran our first Repair Café event a week later. 

After we launched the St. Brelade Repair Café in 2020, its success led to the creation of the Grouville Repair Café in 2022 and the St. Helier Repair Café in 2023.  After a while, we found that, as we were sharing the same volunteers, tools, equipment, spares, website, Instagram, admin and much more, it made sense to join forces as the Jersey Repair Café.

We've held over 50 Repair Café events so far, and over the last couple of years, we’ve visited every parish in the Island, and been made very welcome, so we're looking forward to continuing going ‘on tour’, in addition to running our home parish events.

We're always looking for volunteers, so do have a think if there's anything you could help with.  Come along for a chat and a cuppa, and see what it's all about - You'll be most welcome. 🙂

SOCIAL - to bridge the generation gap by bringing all age groups together in a social, constructive and educational setting, and to bring parishioners together in general with a common purpose.

ENVIRONMENTAL  - to help the Island reduce its waste and reduce its carbon footprint by giving Parishioners an option to disposing of faulty items and replacing them with new ones, when they could be repaired, reused or repurposed.
(Latest data requested 3/1/24)

EDUCATIONAL - to encourage people to see and learn how to repair things, and to give them the knowledge and confidence to repair things themselves in future, rather than automatically disposing of them and replacing them, because ‘repair would probably cost more than a new one.’