Generous Donation from local citizens supports fixing in lock down
Repair Cafe Wales would like to publicly thank the couple who recently sent us a generous cash donation. They had some disposable income and wanted to donate to a grassroots, community-focused organisation during COVID-19.
Although the monthly events across Wales that see volunteer fixers repairing household items for free are currently suspended; the drive towards reducing waste continues in the background. Event organisers are busy setting up on-demand, repair services with plans to digitally connect customers to fixers. Arrangements are in the final stages for ensuring safety for all whilst reducing the number of things going to landfill. This donation will be highly useful to our plans which include digitisation the repair café service.
Sharing a windfall to benefit Repair Café Wales volunteer-led drive for a more sustainable future
Although both husband and wife wish to remain anonymous, they shared their motivations for donating.
“Very simply, when the pandemic broke and lockdown started, I’d just started receiving an industrial pension. There was no deferral option, it paid out in February (and then monthly) whether I wanted/needed it or not.
This, combined with a reduction in our discretionary spend (i.e. travel & treats) and ability to work from home, meant we were cushioned financially. So we decided that we should try and do more to support organisations that might be under most radars and possibly not eligible for a lot of the emergency support schemes.
As well as giving more to those charities we’ve supported regularly for a long time, we’ve tried to do a little with a range of organisations that are smaller. Working at grassroots, they are the sorts of organisations that, whenever and however we come out of this, our communities will want/need them to still be there and able to carry on their great work. They range from organisations like yourselves, self-growing/green initiatives (in urban areas), refugees, poverty and community food initiatives – that sort of thing. If our situation changes, for example my wife gets furloughed, or we have new calls on our support from family, then we may need to adjust but will cross those bridges if we come to them.
In terms of Repair Cafe Wales, I’m fairly active on social media and try to share/retweet community initiatives, particularly those local to Cardiff or throughout Wales, and we did attend one of the cafes held at Penarth. This will be our second donation.”
Repair Cafe Wales will be putting this highly welcome gift to good use promoting a repairing culture through online fixing sessions and ensuring the skills of our community of fixers continue to be available to customers until repair cafes can reopen their doors.
