29/05/2026
We recently held our AGM - at it we elected a new chair - Peter Wells who has taken over from David Chapman who has been a great chair since we opened two years ago. David presented his Chair's report which you can see below.
Thanks to The Ship Inn, Wokingham for hosting us!
We are always on the lookout for new volunteers - interested? Take a look at our website.
The next Wokingham Repair Café will be on Saturday 13th June.
♻️ Wokingham Repair Café (WRC) Chair’s Report 2025-2026
Looking back upon the birth and life to date of the Wokingham Repair Café has been a mixture of pleasure, admiration, and respect. Admiration and respect for everyone involved in the Wokingham Repair Café without exception. Everyone has contributed so much, in their own generous way, and without which we would not be in the strong place we are today.
In the life of human individuals the often quoted significant stages include hatching, matching, and despatching. We’re born, we live for a while, we die. There is in the life of every new human group the notion of stages, commonly called forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning.
Forming: the initial stages of getting together and setting up
Storming: the process of organising and setting up processes and practices
Norming: the process of learning to be together, trusting each other and sharing leadership
Performing: being a fully functional team with interdependent individuals
Adjourning: adjusting to change, navigating new ways of doing things, making way for others to join – but not dying! I believe we are at this stage of adjusting after two years of operations.
A famous African proverb says, “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
During last year we have continued to tweak the way we operate and in so doing made continued progress, consolidating our efficiency in setting up and what we can offer customers.
We continue to attract volunteers, whether repairers or customer service people, and as a result continue to attract customers willing to join with us in our attempt to repair and sustain the planet on which we depend for life itself.
We have offered support through the year to other local communities hoping to set up a RC in their neighbourhood including Finchampstead and Bracknell.
Tools are often donated to the RC and those not needed are forwarded on to a local branch of a national charitable organisation, Tools With A Mission who collect unwanted usable tools, refurbish them, and sort them into trade tool kits for use abroad.
The customer feedback survey offers us valuable insights into what works well for the customer, whilst the satisfaction rating with our customers remains very high.
As an organisation using a fantastic community space, which is also open to other community groups, we have remained flexible to their needs and often help to accommodate them as we end our session and they begin to set up for their session e.g. choral and orchestral societies.
I am proud to report that WRC volunteers have responded with a high degree of generosity to offer their skills to the organisers of the Reading Festival who wish to offer a repair service to the festival goers during the festival itself.
We move into this next year with a need to update our safeguarding procedures, particularly as we welcome our first under 18yrs volunteer with a very special talent with fixing problems with all things IT! WRC is proud to be an inclusive organisation which views diversity as a strength.
We continue to have internet connection issues during live sessions and these are being attended to jointly between those great minds of the RC and AS.
We have felt unable to be seen to support private enterprises promoting what they have to offer despite their objectives being similar to those of the WRC.
I shall be stepping down from being chair of the WRC but will continue to be involved in its work. I am indebted to the support I have received from everyone involved and appreciate your encouragement from the very beginning.
Finally, I can only thank everyone involved in the WRC who have, in their own distinct individual way, contributed to its continued success over the past year and indeed since its inception. My sincere thanks to everyone. I am so proud to have been, and continue to be, a part of this fantastic world-wide movement and in particular to this local iteration here in Wokingham. “To Life”!!
