A free White Center Repair Time event will be held on Saturday, March 9, 2019, from 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. at Steve Cox Memorial Park (aka “The Log Cabin” at 1321 SW 102nd Street):

Sign-ups are informal and not required, but if you would like to sign up to attend, you can post a comment on the event’s Facebook event page about what you plan to bring for them to fix! You can also sign up or ask questions by contacting project organizer Tom at [email protected] or at 206-477-4481. For the repair event, you must be present during the repair. There is no assurance an item can be fixed, or that attempting to fix it won’t break it even more. Services are offered on a “first-come, first-served” basis (matching the items with the fixers with the appropriate skills) and they try, if possible, to work on at least one item from everyone who comes in. If you bring more than one item, they will try to work on your other items as time allows. For specialized repairs (which many are), they may not be able to work on your item unless you bring the specific parts or materials needed for your repair. Please only bring items small enough to be easily carried in by one person. Do not bring any items that are leaking, dangerous, contain gasoline, or have a strong odor. Clothing and other textiles that you bring in for mending should be washed first. Although they encourage walk-ins, please sign up in advance if possible to let them know what you plan to bring, so the fixers can be prepared. NEW SPECIAL FEATURE And there will be a special feature at this March 9 event! Separate from repairs, the White Center-based non-profit WestSide Baby will be collecting donated new and used children’s items to distribute free of charge to local families in need. WestSide Baby, in partnership with the community, provides essential items to children in need by collecting and distributing diapers, clothing, and equipment. Here’s their list of most-needed items and other acceptable items to donate external link . You can also learn more about WestSide Baby, while you wait to get your repair items worked on! NEW CLOTHING SWAP Also as a separate activity/event, but in the gym with everything else, they’ll have a FREE CLOTHING SWAP. Bring some clothes, and browse to see what you can find! They have held 50 of these repair events so far – all over King County outside Seattle. Free and open to all, these repair events serve many low-income and fixed-income residents, and many people of color. A number of volunteer “fixers” are also people of color. Repair events, often called repair cafés or other names, are not a new concept. But this repair events program was the first big program like this in Washington State, and has been emulated by several organizations in western Washington. They have also received great public support and media attention for these repair events, including this KCTS 9 public television segment (shot at an event at the SeaTac Community Center in 2017):
[embed]https://youtu.be/QzHachVzGPU[/embed]
…and this KNKX (formerly KPLU) public radio segment (recorded at an event at the Skyway Library in 2018):
[embed]https://cpa.ds.npr.org/kplu/audio/2018/09/0915_pacific_repair_for_web.mp3[/embed]
They have also done some creative multi-cultural promotion of these repair events, including this Vietnamese-language public service commercial that is currently running during the Vietnamese programming block on the Seattle-area Crossings TV cable TV channel:
[embed]https://youtu.be/k0eHE5O8QBQ[/embed]
This repair event – aimed at reducing waste and building community! – is brought to you by the King County Solid Waste Division’s EcoConsumer public outreach program, and King County Parks Division. The schedule for all King County-sponsored repair events (and other area repair events, as they hear about them) is at KingCounty.gov/repair-events. “Thanks – see you there!”
]]>