Students plan and organize a Repair Café where they invite other students, teachers or the local community to repair broken or worn items instead of throwing them away. The Repair Café can focus on clothes, bikes and scooters, toys or other everyday products.
The intention is for students to experience how repairing can be an alternative to overconsumption and to gain experience in practical problem solving and collaboration.
Talk to students about why it is important to repair instead of throwing away. Introduce the concept of the repair café. Students agree on what they will (could) repair.
In pairs, students take a look at Repair Café – Giving Things New Life! to learn more about how they organize repair cafés around the country. Students also look for videos on the internet to get more visual images of how it might work in practice. They record their ideas and inputs along the way.
With their partner and the Brainstorming method, students write down concrete needs for repair (e.g. holes, buttons, zippers) that they can imagine needing to be repaired.
They make a table with 3 columns: needs, materials (e.g. sewing thread, needle, sewing machine, scraps of clothing for patches), and skills needed (e.g. being able to patch a hole or sew on buttons), and fill it in.
Using the Weaving Together method, students in class create an overall table of needs, materials and skills. They talk about how they will ensure they have the necessary skills to repair – and whether they need to learn any techniques beforehand.
Students Brainstorming together about possible roles to take on and what groups need to be set up to fulfill them. They distribute the tasks between them. This can be e.g. repair group, documentation group (photos and video), marketing group, host and logistics group, etc.
With the Interest Groups method, students select the group they want to work with.
The groups work and prepare and market the repair café. Some example tasks:
Students welcome guests and explain how the café works.
Students and guests work together to repair clothes, bikes, electronics or other items. The documentation group documents the process with pictures, videos and possibly photos. They interview guests along the way.
| Create | Act |