Community
Alcosta Senior and Community Center Opens Monthly Repair Café and Intergenerational Tech Clinic in San Ramon
Volunteer engineers mend small appliances and bicycles while Youth Advisory Committee teens guide older adults through telehealth portals and emergency alerts.
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Recreation coordinators with the City of San Ramon Parks and Community Services Department and volunteer engineers from the San Ramon Senior Foundation inaugurated a monthly Saturday Repair Café and Intergenerational Digital Literacy Lab on Saturday morning inside Vista Grande Room A at the Alcosta Senior and Community Center at 9300 Alcosta Boulevard. Operating on the fourth Saturday of each month from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM, the free neighborhood clinic pairs eighteen retired electrical and mechanical engineers with members of the San Ramon Teen Council to keep repairable household goods out of Contra Costa County landfills while expanding digital confidence for older residents.
At six workbench stations equipped with soldering irons, digital multimeters, thread sergers, and bicycle truing stands, volunteer fixers helped fifty-four San Ramon households troubleshoot vacuum cleaners, toaster ovens, antique table lamps, torn winter jackets, and commuter bicycles during the opening three hours. Residents pay only for specialized replacement fuses or brake cables if needed, and volunteers teach owners how to clean motor brushes and replace worn power cords safely.
Across the hall in the Tech Lounge, sixteen bilingual student tutors from California High School and Dougherty Valley High School offered one-on-one thirty-minute coaching sessions on smartphones, iPads, and laptops. Tutors assisted older adults with configuring Contra Costa County Community Warning System (CWS) text alerts, navigating patient telehealth video portals, spotting phishing text messages, and borrowing large-print audiobooks through the Contra Costa County Library Libby app.
The program is supported by a $28,500 municipal waste-diversion mini-grant from RecycleSmart and the San Ramon Senior Foundation. Residents can reserve a thirty-minute tech tutoring slot or register a household item for the November repair clinic on the City of San Ramon Senior Programs Portal.
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