Cafés Conserto Portugal

Cafés ConSerto are a voluntary and itinerant project carried out by citizens / friends who met each other from the online community Lixo Zero Portugal and the Repair Café Lisboa events.

Inspired by the example of the Repair Café Foundation, Cafés ConSerto Portugal were designed to create local groups of volunteers who serve their community under the support of a national ‘flag’.

Cafés ConSerto are informal, mutual aid and free meetings where they share repair knowledge and tips on restoring everyday items such as appliances; clothing and textile articles; mobile phones; tablets and computers; furniture; bicycles and other household objects that would otherwise be discarded as junk. They are opportunities for ‘celebration’ of volunteering, community spirit, inter generational sharing of knowledge and skills and appreciation of local makers, repairers and artisans, with a view to ecological & economic sustainability.

These gatherings take place wherever there is a space of free use and a community linked to this space, with members with knowledge and experience of domestic repairs and willing to learn how to repair their small household objects.

The work of the Cafés ConSerto is of ‘facilitation’ and dissemination. They do not want it to be just their ‘project’. They want it to spread. They look for places where there is not only a free space for the host, but also volunteer repairers and willing participants.
They help with logistics facilitate the accomplishment of the 1st meetings. But their goal is that the ‘locals’ organize and autonomize; within the ‘spirit’ of sharing, between-help and ecological concern.
Their motto? Share! Learn! Repair!