Rally your geeky friends and cohorts to help others out by applying your technical, creative, and constructive skills for repair.
It’s easy to take for granted how we can buy stuff to replace broken stuff – though it’s a bit wasteful to just throw things away (and some like electronics are a bit hard to recycle).
It’s also easy to take for granted the skills that let us repair things so we don’t have to throw stuff out. I imagine you’ve got a few friends or even a whole club very good at making and fixing things, from cosplay to computers.
So, hold a Fix-It-Up Event.
Maybe at a convention or a hackerspace or a church or what have you, go and hold an event where you repair things for people. You don’t just help them save and reuse things, you might teach people valuable skills:
- Cosplayer? Do clothes repair for people or charities.
- Technical? Computer repair and reuse or repurposing might be your bag. If nothing else dead systems can yield parts for others.
- Handy? Repair appliances, furniture, and more.
- Gamer? Help people repair or clean their treasured old systems.
There’s also many ways you can combine this. A clothing repair shop can reuse cosplay scraps. Handy geeks who help out with basic repair can also use their skills to do convention setup. Combine electronic repair with good recycling practices and education.
Plus, when you team up, you can combine tools, though you’ll probably get very territorial about who owns what.
So go ahead and try and do some fix-ups.