GOAT is looking for people to help us unpack some of the generously donated stuff we’ve just moved into our new community workshop !!!!! for wheelchair and assistive tech in downtown Oakland!!!!!
We’re at 10th and Broadway, right behind the Bookmark Bookstore. (Very convenient to 12th St. BART!)
I’ll be there this week Tuesday and Wednesday from 10-4, and next week pretty much all week. Please let me know, at liz@openassistivetech.org, if you might be able to come help us move around our shelves, boxes, wheelchairs, tools, and supplies! (You have to text or call me to get in. )
Here’s a little wish list for GOAT Space, if you have any of it to donate:
- more shelves! of pretty much any kind
- a sturdy workbench (small is ok!)
- any sort of utility or tool cart on wheels
- electric tea kettle, mini fridge, small microwave
- a small (electrically) adjustable height desk, table or workbench
I was at the space on Friday for a day of planning our buildout, and actually spent half that time giving stuff away and helping people out who came in to look around. Three cushions have found new homes, and I helped a wonderful activist with a thorny tech support issue! As my reward, I was bought lunch and also got the most amazing cupcake I’ve ever eaten in my life (key lime, from Cupcakin‘)
As we move boxes around, we will also be labelling, measuring, and doing a rough inventory of the obviously bulky things, like cushions, seat backs, tires, wheel assemblies, and footrests. Then we will be able to make that list available so that we can quickly give it away to people who can immediately use it!
We’ll have work areas and tools for manual and power chairs, and a lot of shelves of wheelchair parts, bolts, accessories, all sorts of useful stuff, FREE for anyone to use! We’ll be building weird new things out of cheap things from the hardware store! And we’ll sell some small things, like art, stickers, zines, and wheelchair / mobility gear accessories!
I’ll tell the story soon of how this unexpected, enormous donation of the contents of an entire wheelchair repair warehouse fell into our hot little hands!
And there are so many photos of our whirlwind, 3 weeks in May of volunteers packing all the stuff and people coming in to get help as we packed. And the several giant u-haul loads of chairs we immediately handed off to sister organizations around the Bay Area (since they can fix and distribute them faster than we’d be able to while we work on our buildout). More posts about all that, coming soon!
Here’s a tour of how GOAT Space looks now, A super sweet space, piled high with boxes!!! Come hang out with me and the other GOATs and work on our buildout, it’ll be happening for the whole summer – and it won’t be boring.