(Re)Building An Industry | Resilience

Economic Programs

Repair keeps more dollars in the community versus money spent purchasing new items manufactured elsewhere. An economy with a healthy repair industry provides more jobs and more income to its citizens. Repair shifts the locus of control to the consumer, offering more than just the options provided by a globalized producer complex.

Repair Services

We are a Community Supported Repair Shop offering the widest possible array of repair services. It's repair services for the community, by the community. We fix everything from toasters to tractors!

See the Repair Services page of this website for all the details.

Repair Business Incubator & Cooperative

The nonprofit serves as a cooperative repair shop space that allows individual mechanics to set up and build their own independent repair businesses. In addition to providing a collaborative workshop environment to promote technical skill building, we also support each with business coaching and support including business formation, branding and marketing, accounting, and bookkeeping. Our current resident business is:

The capacity of the Link Lane shop is set at 5 concurrent, full-time mechanics. Each mechanic is charged a monthly amount to cover the overhead costs of operations. It is designed to produce an environment to prepare a mechanic for fully independent business operation. Contact us for current openings.

Resale

The nonprofit takes in a large number of items from the public, many of which are very suitable for repair. These items make excellent skill building projects for mechanics. When finished, the items are made available to the public at no cost. Donations to help support the mission are optional, and appreciated.

Education Programs

Repair is important, but not regularly practiced in our economy. This points us to a need for both building skills as well as knowledge and understanding.

Apprenticeships

Individual mechanics working with Retrospect Resilience have the option to take on an apprentice. Apprenticeship arrangements follow a standard set of guidelines and expectations. When nonprofit funds allow, a hourly rate can be earned by the apprentice for this work, a portion of which will be paid to the mentor mechanic to supplement the time they invest in the apprentice. Contact us to inquire about openings.

Skill Building Workshops & Collaborative Repair Space

Members of the community may not be interested in making repair their occupation. A much larger portion of people would like to be able to be more capable in carrying out their own repairs. On a volunteer basis, Retrospect Resilience will offer workshops designed to offer both specific and general skills to the community. In addition, we offer the opportunity for members to do repairs on their own, but with tools, space, and assistance provided by Retrospect volunteers. See our calendar page for upcoming events and open workshop days and times.

Consumer Education

We offer volunteers to speak to classes and groups in the community on the importance of repair. We also produce content in the form of videos and presentations provided online via social media platforms.

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Public Policy (Future Program)

We seek opportunities to influence policy to promote producers to design repairable products, to make documentation available, to make parts both available and reasonably affordable.

Environmental Programs

Repair is inherently good in lessening the negative impacts of consumption. And these are two programs provide for additional, direct impact.

Resource and Material Recovery

Items donated to the nonprofit are assessed for repair-worthiness. Items not suitable for repair enter this program to be carefully dismantled. Reusable parts and materials are recovered and stored for later use in other projects. Non-usable materials are sorted for scrap, recycling, or waste.

The work of dismantling post-consumer items is conducted by volunteers. Due to the lower degree of technical skills and the inherent learning opportunity to see how things work and how they are assembled, this work makes for skill building opportunity for younger or more novice mechanics.

Waste Diversion (Future Program)

This is similar to resource and material recovery but at greater scale. This is direct diversion of the waste stream from waste haulers. If labor and space resources are sufficient, methods and standards developed at our shop can be deployed at the community scale.