RE-POWER

The project focused on the human side of Repair Cafés: how to welcome, train and keep volunteers and participants who often live in isolation — older people, migrants, women outside the labour market, village residents. Four very different settings — Dundalk, Messejana and Baixo Alentejo, Barcelona and Athens — tested the same method and documented it.

Buinho led the Repair Café activity. It started by listening: participatory meetings with the Messejana sewing club and the local Santa Casa da Misericórdia. In October 2025 it hosted a four-day training for the partners in Messejana, including a live Repair Café with the Castro Verde senior university. Ten Repair Cafés followed — eight with Resialentejo and two in villages of Castro Verde — together with sewing club sessions and a dissemination event in Cuba. Some senior participants became volunteers.

The project produced the open-source RE-POWER Toolkit — participatory focus groups, a practical guide to running Repair Cafés and communication — and a documentary video for each country. In Alentejo it led to a growing rural repair programme in Castro Verde.

• 10 Repair Cafés in Baixo Alentejo, with around 120 participants, and 8 sewing club sessions
• 4-day training in Messejana for the partner teams (October 2025)
• More than 200 people at the dissemination session in Cuba
• More than 30 repair sessions across the four countries

Project website

Partners