Source: RNZ Morning Report Essentials for Friday 16 January 2026 A recent RNZ Morning Report  segment highlighted a new report from global cybersecurity company Norton LifeLock, warning that online scammers are increasingly exploiting New Zealanders’ well-known “number 8 wire” mindset our tendency to be resourceful, trusting, and willing to fix things ourselves. While this ingenuity has long been a strength, it can also create vulnerabilities in digital spaces, where quick fi

We are still buzzing from our celebrations of International Repair Day on 15 October 2022 with seven in-person repair cafés in Devonport , Napier , Wellington , Nelson , Otautahi Christchurch , Rolleston as well as the launch of the Ngaio Repair Café ! Repair Café Aotearoa NZ held “The Repair Show”, our online event which offered 21 presentations by local repair café organisers, international leaders in the repair space, research, our progress in the #righttorepairnz movement

Repair Café Aotearoa NZ launched their very first Repair Café Aotearoa Song on International Repair Day on Saturday, 15 October 2022! Have a listen: Watch the Repair Café Song on our Youtube channel ! This song is written and performed by the wonderful Baz Caitcheon of Bazzacam - a longtime Repair Café supporter and film producer. Baz toured around Aotearoa to capture some of these beautiful clips of Repair Café volunteers- which Repair Café team do you recognize? A HUGE th

Repair Café Aotearoa NZ and our local Repair Cafés are SO excited to be involved in The Restart Project's "Repair Everywhere" video! What is Repair Everywhere all about? Via Restart Project : "This year for the sixth annual Repair Day, we want to show the world that you can find Repair Everywhere . In the world we live today, repair is often not at the forefront of people’s minds. Instead, we are encouraged to just replace our things when they break. Not only can this be an e

Kia ora friends of Repair Cafés, By midnight last night, our Crowdfunding Campaign had reached a whopping $10,778! Even after raising our goal from $5,000 to $7,500, we well exceeded this- and we cannot thank you enough for your support and encouragement- be it by donating, or sharing to your friends, families and colleagues. We would love to invite you all to our annual online event held on International Repair Day, Saturday 15 October 2022. Our theme this year is: ‘ The R

Kia ora ano friends of Repair Cafés, Here’s a quick update from us with the good news that we had six (6) repair cafés associated with RCANZ open this weekend, 24 - 25 September! Also, a big thank you to everyone who donated toward our new goal of $7,500, which will allow us to do so much more for our local Repair Cafés. Repair Café Aotearoa NZ empowers local Repair Cafés with set-up support, resources, online platforming, community connection and more, so they can focus on w

On 23 September, we are over halfway through our Givealittle campaign and almost reached our goal of $5,000 with 119 generous donors! WOW! Power to community repair! We’ve set our new goal for $7,500, which will allow us to do so much more for our local Repair Cafés. Your donation will help is us to provide more specialist tools, storage and promotional resources for repair cafés, and help the repair café movement to grow across Aotearoa New Zealand. Repair Café Aotearoa NZ

On Tuesday 20 September, Christchurch Repair Riverlution held their monthly repair café at the Richmond Community Center. The wonderful volunteers were Alan Liefting, Aidas Janulis, Thomas Gilchrist, Just-Be Inga, Séku Skandan, Lila Laird, Lisa Holmes, Vincent Rade, Morgane Forde-Honoré, Felix Harrison, Hayley Johnson and Darcy Carter. 28 items were successfully repaired, 8 are still to be repaired and 3 were not repairable. Not bad for 2 hours of work! Cathy Allden and Hayl

Brigitte Sistig, co-founder of Repair Café Aotearoa NZ was on RNZ on 20 September with the wonderful Charlotte Ryan, talking about the beauty and diversity of repair cafés and our crowdfunding campaign on Givealittle ! Check out the interview here! Our campaign, " Using local skills to keep treasures out of landfills ", runs from 15 - 29 September. Please DONATE and SHARE to help us empower repair cafés in Aotearoa communities. Stay tuned for more updates about our first cro

On 18 September, the Raumati South community held their first ever Repair Café! They had 110 items brought in, of which 92 were repaired in just 3 hours! The remaining 18 items received thorough assessments and advice in repairability from any of the 14 expert volunteers available on the day. There were 27 volunteers helping all together, including the Scouts managing their cool café on site. Check out these awesome pics of happy Repair Café visitors! Repair Café Aotearoa NZ

On Saturday 17 September, Nelson Tasman Climate Forum held their monthly Repair Café. They successfully repaired 21 items- 12 electrical items, 7 textiles and 2 miscellaneous items! Plus, the team of volunteer experts provided helpful advice on any items that they were unable to repair. The team was made up of 9 volunteers- 5 repairers, and 4 volunteers to greet, support or coordinate. Check out these happy faces with their newly repaired item! Repair Café Aotearoa NZ empowe

Repair Café Aotearoa NZ is CROWDFUNDING from 15- 29 September 2022! Fundraising for our Repair Café communities to help fix your precious belongings Check out our campaign video to see how fun Repair Cafés are! We all get frustrated when things break, worry about the cost to replace them and the number of items going into landfill. Repair Café Aotearoa NZ brings communities together to fix their broken household items and personal belongings for free. This protects the enviro

Adding a Repair Café Aotearoa NZ perspective to a Repair Café International conversation- Should Repair Café volunteers be paid for their efforts? We are pleased to be featured in a multi- national conversation about the question of compensating Repair Café volunteers, in this op-ed article published on the Repair Café International blog page! RCANZ co-founder Brigitte Sistig gives her views alongside Guido Verbist, founder of the first Repair Café in Australia . “Creating a

Wastebusters recently released their annual Slow Fashion Report, based on a survey conducted earlier this year collecting peoples opinions on fashion and consumption. Based in Te Waipounamu, Wastebusters is a fantastic organisation championing waste reduction and resource recovery. This survey was conducted as part of Wastebusters annual Slow Fashion Month, held every March. This survey is now collated into a report, supported by Queenstown Lake District Council. The intentio

Repair Café Aotearoa NZ was fortunate to attend Festival for the Future 2022 , July 29-31 in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. This was a fantastic opportunity to meet young changemakers, who gather at FFTF to learn and celebrate the incredible work going on in Aotearoa toward a positive future. The team at Inspiring Stories hosted us in their Expo space, where we were able to korero with attendees about the growing repair movement in Aotearoa. Our stall had enthusiastic reception among

On Thursday, 7 July at midday, we delivered our Make it our Right to Repair petition to the Minister for the Environment, Hon. David Parker with 12,901 signatures! We were supported by MPs Hon Eugenie Sage, Ricardo Menendez, Chloe Swarbrick and Helen White, as well as Dr Paul Smith from Consumer NZ and James Griffin from Sustainable Business Network . There was a mini-Repair Café on-site, with Bea Lorimer from Heke Designs and Richard Barter from Bike Kitchen. It was a day

This is the third in a three part series of blogs that look at: 1: Why Repairs Cafes Matter; 2. The policy needs for a right to repair; 3. What a repair future would look like. Most of our Repair Café repairers are older people. The little culture of repairing we still have will die out if we’re not careful, and if it doesn’t link up with a younger generation. I’m hopeful that we can change this, as learning to fix something is educational for the individual, and it also gr

This is the first in a three part series of blogs that look at: 1: Why Repairs Cafes Matter; 2. The policy needs a right to repair; 3. What a repair future would look like. As much as I love Repair Cafés, I started this petition because we need policy change to make sure products that are designed to be repairable and durable, not to be thrown away. Our elected representatives can pass laws that require products to last longer and be easier to repair. We’re leading a petit

This is the first in a three part series of blogs that look at: 1: Why Repairs Cafes Matter; 2. The policy needs a right to repair; 3. What a repair future would look like. A huge amount of things these days could be repaired, that just aren’t. Meanwhile, many companies are designing products to become obsolete, a wasteful way of increasing their businesses profitability. It could just be a toaster. When an element has broken, we all have to ask, will I get it repaired or