Photo: Isra Garcia's blog
Depending on your viewpoint, you might consider Holland innovative, revolutionary or just plain nutty, with their cannabis cafes and Rossebuurts (red light districts), legal euthanasia, the government buying of art to support the artists even though they end up warehousing it.
But today I noticed something the Dutch government is helping support that really warmed my heart. I can picture my dear departed Dutch daddy looking on with pride, because he so enjoyed fixing things in his garage workshop. In Holland, when you have something that needs repair, you don't have to toss it. You can take it to a Repair Cafe.
A journalist named Martine Postma came up with the Repair Cafe Foundation in 2009, and it has caught fire, attracting support financial from other foundations, small donors and the government, which supplied a grant of $525,000. Skilled tinkerers who just enjoy fixing things come together with people who want to learn how and everybody wins (except maybe the manufacturers who encourage consumers to buy new goods whenever the old ones malfunction).
Photo: the Make Handmade Blog
Now Ms. Postma works for the foundation full-time, touring the country and advising volunteers who want to set up their own Repair Cafes on how to obtain funding, get organized and set up shop. Together they're striking a blow against planned obsolescence. What a concept!
Will it catch on? We can only hope so. So far she has had inquiries from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine as well as from South Africa and Australia. And since an article appeared Tuesday in the New York Times, it might go viral.
Daddy would have loved it.