Got skills? Volunteer for Joliet Junior College Repair Cafe

Joliet Junior College’s Sustainability Union seeks volunteers to staff booths for its Repair Café.

The Repair Café event will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 19 at the JJC’s Romeoville campus, 1125 W. 135th St.

Repair Cafés are a global movement of community spaces where volunteers share their skills by fixing items for free, according to a news release from JJC.

Volunteers can be professional artisans, hobbyists or general handy people and craftspeople, according to the release. The only requirements are skills and the desire to help, according to the release.

“The Repair Café motto is ‘Toss it? No way!’” Maria Anna Rayfac said earlier this year. Rayfac is a professor of architecture and sustainability at JJC, who serves as the campus sustainability coordinator. “We want to help the environment and people with these events by keeping things in the economy instead of dumping and replacing them,” Rayfac said.

JJC hosts its Repair Café event during Earth Month in April and Campus Sustainability Month in October, according to the JJC website.

Student sustainability intern Ash Klinder discovered the Repair Café concept while researching campus sustainability initiatives.

“Not only is it great for people to get things fixed, but these events are really good for retired people who have a lot of skills and often don’t have an outlet to share them with the community,” Klinder said previously.

For JJC’s April 2024 Repair Café, Sam Bretz, a JJC culinary alumna, brought her floor fan to JJC’s Repair Café because “I don’t want to add to landfills,” Bretz said.

“These events are really good for retired people who have a lot of skills and often don’t have an outlet to share them with the community.”

—  Ash Klinder, Joliet Junior College student sustainability intern

Yolanda Zenawick, who previously worked in JJC’s records department, brought in a favorite shirt. Toni Budzinski of Mokena brought her favorite sweater.

Volunteers bring varied skills

Melanie Hallam of Minooka said she saw the April 2024 event on Facebook, “thought it was a cool idea” and volunteered her services for that event.

“I sew, embroider,” Hallam said as to why she offered her skills to the Repair Café. “I used to sew my kids random things.”

Chuck Kwasniewski of Joliet brought one of the more unusual items to the April event, a Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio that he said he bought six months ago at a garage sale. Kwasniewski brought it to the Repair Café, hoping someone could fix it or direct him to a person who could.

Pete Kiefert, a retired JJC instructor who once taught in the electrical/electronic automated systems program, said if the filaments are “out” in any of the tubes, it’s likely all of them are out. Kiefert said he wished he had a tube tester.

He said he had one in the 1970s when he repaired a lot of TVs, “but not anymore.”

Eric Gorder of Joliet, an associate professor of arts at JJC, fixed ceramics with his wife, Elise Kendrot, at the April event.

“I even brought in a bag of my own to get repaired,” Gorder said at the time. “A very nice canvas bag I purchased in Japan.”

How to help

Stations where volunteers are needed include (but aren’t limited to):

• Bicycles

• Ceramics

• Clothing and textiles

• Electronics

• Jewelry

• Miscellaneous

• Small furniture

To volunteer and for more information, call 815-280-2644 or email ashley.klinder@jjc.edu.

For more information about the international movement, visit repaircafe.org.