Before she took it along to Repair Cafe Tauranga, Shona Purves’ family heirloom had been sitting broken in a cupboard for years.

“It’s just a circle of toy birds that peck away food when you pull the strings, but the strings had broken,” she says. “It’s about 40 years old. My parents told us that my uncle had made it. It was one of the toys that my children and then my grandchildren enjoyed. I just didn’t want to throw it out.”

Shona saw an article in the Weekend Sun about the repair cafe and on the relevant day took a bus to the event. It turns out her wooden toy wasn’t an easy fix.

“It took considerable effort all morning,” she recalls. “My repairer got suggestions from other people there and some cotton to fix it. I was so impressed by all the work there that was going on.”

Once a month, volunteers at Repair Cafe Tauranga restore household items in an effort to minimise waste. Its usual session on Saturday, September 21 will be followed by a separate event to mark the end of a nationwide festival that celebrates fixing, mending, and extending the life of belongings.

“We’re partnering up with our friends at Envirohub and Tauranga City Council Waste Minimisation to host a celebration of the repair and recycling culture initiatives running in our city,” says co-founder Jennie Halliday. “We’ve got interactive, fun activities, including a ‘take it apart’ table for kids to dismantle items and get a peek at the inner workings, and a petition to support the Right to Repair legislation going through Parliament.”

Since her first experience at Repair Cafe, Shona has been back to get advice on broken kitchen appliances - “They couldn’t be fixed but I was able to sell them for parts” - and she now keeps her beloved bird toy out of reach of her nine grandchildren.

“It’s carefully put away,” laughs Shona. “They’re allowed to look. It might come out again when they’re a little bigger.”

The Repair Cafe will be at at Tinkd Makerspace, 148 Durham Street, Tauranga from 9:30am 11am. Free tickets and bookings available at https://app.tinkd.nz/public/event/66cbc9d31c819a2d6d4aebc2/repair-cafe-tauranga-september.

That will be followed by the Repair Festival family event from 11am-1pm - free tickets at https://events.humanitix.com/repair-festival-tauranga.