Justin Gilger works as a jeweler at Gilger Designs, a family-owned business, and his father spent 55 years in the jewelry business. On a Saturday in October 2023, he volunteered at the Ames Public Library and provided basic jewelry repairs for visitors at no charge. “It’s a small cost for me, but I’d rather help somebody out that needs it,” Gilger told the Iowa State Daily, which reported that it was his third time volunteering at the Ames Repair Café that year.
The Ames Repair Café is an all-volunteer group that pairs people with broken items with people who know how to fix them. The first event took place on Oct. 8, 2022, and Radio Iowa reported beforehand that about 25 volunteers would share their skills. Organizer Mike Van Vertloo told the network at the time, “People around the world have events like this, but this is the first one in Iowa, that I found.” Van Vertloo explained to WHO 13, “We live in a throw-away society, people have that mindset, and it is unfortunate a lot of times it is cheaper to buy a new item than it is to repair it.”
Photo Courtesy Ames Iowa Repair Café
Emma Flynn, a volunteer coordinator, told the Iowa State Daily in 2023 that the café began with a group of friends who each knew how to fix different things and wanted to put that know-how to work for their neighbors. Vikram Bhargava, whom the paper described as ‘a coordinator and a founder, shared the credit: “I am an initiator [of the project], but that’s because I have such a good group of friends I can rely on.” The same report noted that the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation provided financial support for the project.
Flynn also explained the practical need: “There aren’t small mom-and-pop repair shops around anymore, so this is really serving that need.” She has watched volunteers restore family heirlooms passed down through generations.
The café now operates three weekends a year, both inside and outside the library, according to the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation. The most recent event took place on Sept. 19, 2026, according to Ames Main Street. Repairs are free. Under the rules posted by the City of Ames, guests stay with their items during repairs and bring replacement parts if they have them. When volunteers cannot finish a job or need a part, they help the owner find a local repair shop. “There’s no guarantee, we’re all volunteers, we aren’t necessarily professionals. I wouldn’t bring a refrigerator that needs a lot of like a new compressor or anything we’re not going to be able to put in new refrigerant or something like that,” Van Vertloo explained to WHO 13.
An April 2026 event accepted computers and laptops, jewelry, portable electronics, sewing and mending, small kitchen appliances, bicycles and skateboards, garden tools and small engines. The event also offered a brake light repair session that required advance sign-up. A January 2026 list of accepted items also included holiday lights and musical instruments. “If you can fit it in your car, bring it,” Van Vertloo told WHO 13 ahead of the first event.
Repair Cafés also offer opportunities to learn. For the September 2025 event, the city listed small-group sessions on mending, home and kitchen appliances, and bicycles.
Businesses listed as supporters of one of the café’s Earth Day events included Ace Hardware, Fareway, Gilger Designs, Interstate Batteries and Skunk River Cycles. In June 2025, the City of Ames awarded a community grant to Seeds of Sustainability and the Repair Café to purchase tools, offer bicycle repair workshops with KHOI Community Radio and WeCycle, and install a bike rack and repair station at KHOI.
Photo Courtesy Ames Iowa Repair Café
The café is also a partner in the Ames Seed Library, which collects and shares seeds from local growers through a partnership involving the library, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Story County, and Mustard Seed Community Farm. Flower and vegetable seed giveaways are therefore often part of these events. Volunteer Nate Thrailkill explained that both seeds and repairs have a common theme of “reduce, reuse, repair, recycle… So it does actually fit in quite well.”
Photo Courtesy Ames Iowa Repair Café
The idea has spread to Iowa State University. The first campus Repair Café opened at Parks Library in October 2023 as a collaboration among the Ames Repair Café, the City of Ames, and the Ames Public Library. At the event, attendees brought in more than 40 items and 23 volunteers achieved a 74% successful rate in repairing them, according to the Iowa State University Library.
The annual ISU Repair Café returned to the Student Innovation Center on Sept. 23, 2026. Sophomore Caleb Giddings said, “I dropped my bike off, checked in, and then they fixed my bike in about 30 minutes.” Freshman Tara Wright brought a bracelet she has had since birth. She told the Iowa State Daily, “The volunteer I met showed me what she was doing, and actually gave me a recommendation of what to do so that it won’t break again.”
The ISU Repair Café has also offered mending tutorials on topics such as hemming and repairing holes. “We decided to lift up these tutorials so we could share some knowledge about mending items themselves,” explained Tera Lawson, senior program specialist for innovation programs at the Student Innovation Center.
Photo Courtesy Iowa State University Student Innovation Center
Des Moines followed Ames. The first Des Moines Repair Cafe took place on Aug. 27, 2023, at the Franklin Avenue Library, according to an announcement on the DSM Hackerspace email list. The announcement noted, “A partner group in Ames has run several successful events over the last year.” The Des Moines Public Library now lists Seeds of Sustainability’s Repair Cafe as the organizer of its repair café.
Other Iowa communities are holding their own fix-it events. The Iowa City Repair Cafe will hold its next event on Nov. 14, 2026, at the East Side Recycling Center. Because demand is high, guests bringing multiple items are asked to return to the end of the line after each repair. In Fairfield, the public library will host the last of four 2026 Fix-It Friday workshops on Nov. 13. As Alecs Schmidt-Mickunas wrote for the Iowa Source, “You don’t necessarily need to bring something broken. Perhaps you’ve been curious about how to mend a torn garment or approach a household fix you’ve been putting off. Fix-It Friday is an opportunity to learn by watching, asking questions, and working alongside people who are willing to share what they know.”
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund estimates that the average U.S. household could save about $382 annually by repairing its electronics instead of replacing them.
Photo Courtesy Iowa City Repair Cafe
The Ames organizers describe their goal as helping to “reduce waste, share tools and resources, and help build self-reliance skills in our community.” On campus, Lawson put the long-term hope simply: to raise “the comfort level of folks who might be interested in doing it themselves instead of waiting for the next Repair Café.”
That is the quiet promise of the Ames Repair Café. A loose clasp or a bike that won’t shift does not have to end up in the trash. A neighbor who shows how to fix it may have taught someone to fix the next one alone.
