I first came across the concept of Repair Cafés whilst searching online for information about give and take events. It struck me as a great idea and I did some further research in my local area which led me to discover Cambridge Carbon Footprint, Cambridgeshire Repair Café Network and the activity that was already occurring in the Cambridgeshire area. From that point, with the invaluable help of CCF and CRCN, I decided to organise a café in Cambourne and we held a successful first event in December 2019. At our first café, a music box that had not been heard for about 40 years was fixed and it was great to see our brilliant volunteer repairers work together to fix a large ride on toy car. The event was very well received by the local community.
I became a town councillor after becoming involved in community volunteering through litter picking, organised by the council. I wanted to focus on initiatives that highlight and help mitigate environmental issues. We have a vibrant volunteering community in Cambourne, supported by the town council, and have initiatives such as graffiti clearance, group litter picks and community actions days. We have recently installed accessible water coolers in the town council office and community hub, to encourage use of reusable water bottles and to eliminate single use plastic cups. We are also looking at Terracycle initiatives such as crips packet recycling and other initiatives to help reduce single use plastic. I am looking forward to our next Repair Café and making this is an established event within our local community.