Publicity for events & recruiting volunteers
For Stokesley / Swainby Repair Cafe we usually put a post up 8-10 days before the event and another 2-3 days before with 2-3 photos, date/time/venue & short description & any special additions. We write one post then share this across the other local groups: eg May 2024’s post:
May’s Repair Cafe will be at Swainby Village Hall on Saturday 18th 10-12. We will have Andy from Sustrans to give your bikes a free health check & fix if needed as well as free darning / visible mending tutorials as part of #menditmay alongside our regular repair volunteers who will fix your broken household items – electrical appliances, wooden furniture, laptops & mobile phones, toys & bikes, ceramics & glass, clothing & textiles, @blades in need of sharpening – or give advice if we can’t.
All for free including refreshments (donations to cover costs welcomed).
Saving you the cost of buying new, saving the planet from waste, it’s all good!
For Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe we have found and have been regularly posting in these x local groups (see below). These are found by searching for village/town name and neighbourhoods like ‘Stokesley’ and ‘Poto’ in the search bar. There may be more!
- Swainby Banter
- Swainby News
Posters
For Swainby/ Stokesley RC we have created one poster which we then update with new dates every month on a separate strip of paper with Blutak. We display the poster at the following venues:
- Community centres
- Libraries
- GP / health centres
- Small local shops
- Parish Noticeboards
Newspapers
Our ‘local’ paper is the Darlington & Stockton Times North Yorkshire Edition. To start with we wrote an article about Repair Cafes in general with the date of the upcoming one then we place a short advert in the regular villages & towns directory the week preceding the event.
Email listings
A monthly online magazine for our umbrella organisation Climate Action Stokesley & Villages promotes the Repair Cafe in our activities list; this is emailed out to our mailing list of 500.
We also promote the Repair Cafe via village emailing lists (eg Great Ayton & Stokesley Link)
Other media
Our local churches produce monthly newsletters which include our RC in their listings.
David Scrivens of Middlesbrough Environment City produces a mailing list of ‘green’ events. We sent him the Middlesbrough RC poster which he then promoted via his weekly mail outs. He would need at least one week’s notice: David.Scriven@menvcity.org.uk
Recruiting volunteers
At Stokesley/Swainby we have found the most effective way of recruiting volunteers is by directly asking friends and colleagues, then new volunteers ask their friends etc.
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 