JUNE 2026
Introducing Spring 2026 Grantees for Repair in Education
In this newsletter...
Spring 2026 Grantees Announced
October 17, 2026 is International Repair Day
And more!
Students learned about repair from Transition Berkeley at the Community Earth Day Fair — Hosted by Berkeley Unified School District's Climate Literacy Initiative (Spring 2024 grantee).
Introducing
Spring 2026 Grantees!
Repair to Learn: K-5 Repair Curriculum
San Franscisco, California
In partnership with his school's environmental education program, Jimmy Santosa, Lower School Makery teacher at Burke School, will develop K-5 repair curriculum.
The curriculum will be designed around social emotional learning, sustainability education, and intergenerational collaboration. Elementary-aged students will facilitate Repair Clinics, and their parents and grandparents will be trained as repair coaches to support those events.
4-H Camp Curiosity Summer Camp: Repair!
Chautauqua, New York
Chautauqua County 4-H connects youth to hands-on learning opportunities that help them grow into competent, caring, contributing members of society.
They will develop and pilot a program for day campers at their summer 4-H Camp Curiosity to explore repair of electronic, wooden, and textile items. The program and mobile-makerspace will be designed to use in various youth settings in their school-based programs.
Repair & Care: Mending and Upcycling Clinic
New York, New York
Black Girls Sew is a non-profit dedicated to impacting youth and families by teaching sewing, design, and entrepreneurship; fostering creativity, confidence, and sustainability. Their mission focuses on diversifying the fashion industry, empowering Black and brown youth to take ownership of their fashion narrative, and providing tools for economic independence.
Black Girls Sew will lead Repair & Care, a youth-led mending and upcycling clinic, and create a zine for local distribution and online publication.
Stitch by Stitch: Textile Repair Kits for Library Patrons and Educators
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Resource Council (PRC), Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse (PCCR), and Assemble will develop three hands-on textile repair lesson plans equipping K-12 teachers to integrate textile repair into core classes, building repair literacy and environmental awareness. Resources will meet Pennsylvania standards for science. The collaboration will create three mending kits for teachers to borrow from Pittsburgh area lending libraries.
High School Robotics Team Engages with the Repair Movement
Berkeley, California
Team 5419 Berkelium, Berkeley High School Robotics Team, participates in local community repair events as fixer volunteers. Now, they will bring the Right to Repair movement to their international robotics competition network, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST).
Berkelium 5419 will embed repair culture into FIRST Robotics by running repair stations at competitions and publishing free guides, inspiring and supporting other teams to engage with their local community repair events.
The Culture of Repair in Agricultural Education
Worcester, New York
Sandra Knapp, Pre-K-6 STEM teacher and FFA Advisor, and Dr. Leanne M. Avery, Professor & Chair of the Elementary Education Department at SUNY Oneonta, along with college students in that teachers training program, will develop a repair program for Grade 7 Agriculture students in the rural Worcester Central School District.
This grant will expand standards-aligned STEM learning through hands-on equipment repair, informed by New York State’s Right to Repair law and access to tools, parts, and industry best practices. Building on students’ existing strengths, the program cultivates technical expertise, workplace readiness, and college preparation while delivering meaningful service to the local community.
Fix It Club
Methow Valley, Washington
Since 2002, Methow Recycles has been inspiring and facilitating resource conservation through recycling, waste prevention, and materials reuse in rural Washington state.
Methow Recycles is using repair as a lens to teach local elementary school students that they are active participants in creating a circular economy. Their Fix It Club is an afterschool program where students gain hands-on skills from local experts who provide mentorship in sewing, deconstruction, upcycling, and electrical and mechanical repairs. Methow Recycles will create and publish resources to support others in establishing their own Fix It Club.
SewPo Studio
Portland, Maine
Julie York is a computer science and media teacher and department chair from South Portland High School. She supported students bringing projects like Riot Refurb and SewPo Studio to her classroom.
SewPo Studio empowers students to repair, repurpose, and reimagine clothing through hands-on sewing and design. By teaching practical skills alongside environmental awareness, the program will build a generation of makers who choose to mend rather than discard, and share that knowledge with their community. The initiative will create a complete, adaptable curriculum framework and resource guide to share broadly through online publishing, community workshops and repair events, and conferences and other professional networks.
Thank you to our Grants Committee!
A heartfelt thank you to our Grants Committee members: Brooke Toczylowski, Dan Hettinger, and Kami Bruner.
Brooke is a former teacher and co-Executive Director of Agency by Design Oakland. She lead the team that developed the Cultivating a Repair Mindset Toolkit and now makes art in Connecticut.
Dan founded and runs Western North Carolina Repair Cafe. His work following Hurricane Helene demonstrated how repair and commitment to the wellbeing of neighbors are fundamental to community resiliency.
Kami is the force behind Repair x Reuse WA and the Repair Economy project, an initiative based in Washington State that supports repair and reuse movements regionally, nationally, and internationally.
Thank you to our fiscal sponsor, Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.
Prior Grantees
Visit the Grantees page to learn about other exciting initiatives by some truly amazing people. Then follow the links to their websites and get to know them better!
10TH ANNUAL
INTERNATIONAL REPAIR DAY
International Repair Day
Saturday, October 17th
Educators!
This is your opportunity to link your work with the global repair movement!
International Repair Day is an annual celebration for everyone who makes repair happen in their communities around the world. This year is its 10th anniversary!
Recognizing that the movement’s strength comes from its being both vibrant at the community level and robust at the global level, the 2026 theme is: "Repair Brings Us Together”.
We encourage you to coordinate your repair activities around October 17th and register them on the International Repair Day website.
The Educator Resource Library is a curated suite of resources is designed to provide educators and repair advocates with valuable tools to integrate teaching about repair into any educational setting.
Notes From The Field is a series of essays from educators and repair advocates who put repair at the heart of their teaching and organizing.
These accounts offer insights into and can serve as models for teaching repair in real-world contexts – from classrooms and makerspaces to libraries, community centers, and other educational settings.
3rd Thursdays Shop Talk
This is a virtual watercooler for organizers of repair, share, and remaking programs - plus anyone considering starting one!
No Agenda • No Time Limit • Lightly Moderated
Monthly - Every Third Thursday:
8pm Eastern / 5pm Pacific
Join Zoom Meeting, or add your info to learn about upcoming Repair Economy Shop Talks to connect with other repair organizers across the globe.
Co-hosted by our friends at Repair Café North Carolina, Sustainable Hudson Valley, the REBUILD Project, and Repair x Reuse Washington