At Chennai’s first repair cafe, children learn to tinker and fix

Chennai's first repair cafe equips children with skills to fix toys, bikes, electronics, promoting sustainability and self-reliance.

What do you do when your bicycle needs a repair? Or when your favourite stuffed toy has a tear and needs to be sewn up? Do you know how to tinker around with, and fix a watch or a camera that has stopped working? A collective of homeschooling parents from Chennai, and The Repair Cafe Bengaluru Foundation have come together to begin Chennai’s first repair cafe to answer these questions. 

“As a group of volunteers, we organised our first repair cafe in Bengaluru in 2015, inspired by a similar initiative from the Netherlands. The concept was modified to suit our cities, and we have trained the focus on children. We have tied up with residents associations, parenting groups, and even individuals who wish to introduce this concept to their community,” says Poorna Sarkar, coordinator.

Poorna, and a team of volunteers from Bengaluru were present at the repair cafe in Chennai on Sunday. While it was only a half-day pop-up of sorts in Chennai, the Repair Cafe community in Bengaluru has been conducting workshops during the summer break, through weekends for children there.

At the portico of S Meenalochani’s home in Chennai, small stalls were set up in different corners for darning and sewing, electronics and carpentry, and bicycle repair. Children who walked into the repair cafe, came with cameras and watches that needed repair, niggles in their bicycles, stuffed animals, remote-operated cars and more — all in need of tinkering. 

Melvie Pearlita was one such participant, keenly focussed on her clock, at the electronics repair station. As a volunteer patiently explained the different moving parts of the device, the ten 10-year-old followed instructions, and began her repairs. 

“We have had around ten participants come in, and the electronics repair station is a big hit,” said Meenalochani. A homeschooling parent, she said that learning how to do at least a first level of repair for things at home was an extremely useful skill for children to pick up, and was something often ignored by the current education system.

“Learning what is a diode may not really be in a child’s everyday context, but understanding why his remote car is not lighting up, is. A repair cafe is a wonderful opportunity to give products a longer life, and is important in a world where overconsumption thrives,” she added.