Repair Cafés coming to Cooperstown

Beginning on Saturday, February 15, there will be a series of Repair Cafés at the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market in Cooperstown. People visiting the Repair Café can bring in a broken item for volunteer repair experts to make small repairs and give advice on how to fix a variety of items. The repairs will be done free of charge, materials needed to fix items will be available to purchase. The Repair Café series is a collaborative program of Otsego 2000, which runs the Market, the Otsego County Conservation Association, and the Otsego Land Trust.

Each Repair Café Cooperstown will have a different focus: February 15 is small appliances, audio equipment, and consumer electronics; March 1 is textiles, clothing, and stuffed animals: and March 8 is computers and cellphones. The cafés will be held from 10:30 am to 1 pm, during the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market.

“We are glad to be bringing the Repair Café concept to Cooperstown,” said Peg Odell, program and communications manager at Otsego 2000. “We want to encourage repairing things instead of replacing them, to build community, and to keep fixable things from being thrown out. The year-round Cooperstown Farmers’ Market is a welcoming place of community, so hosting Repair Cafés here is a great fit.” Otsego 2000 founded and manages the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market, which is open year-round on Saturdays, 10 am to 2 pm.  

 “OCCA and our dedicated recycling committee are genuinely excited about the repair cafe initiative and thrilled to partner with Otsego 2000 and the Otsego Land Trust to make it happen. Through these efforts, we can foster a more sustainable future and encourage a culture of resourcefulness within our community,” said Shelby MacLeish, assistant director of the Otsego County Conservation Association

The Repair Café concept was developed by Martine Postma in the Netherlands in 2009, and now there are more than 4,300 community-run Repair Cafés around the world. Repair Cafés build community and promote repairing items instead of throwing them out, thereby decreasing the number of items added to landfills every year.

The Cooperstown Farmers’ Market is located at 101 Main Street in Pioneer Alley in Cooperstown. For more information on the Cooperstown Repair Café, or to volunteer to be a repair coach, please see otsego2000.org/repaircafe or call 607/547-8881.