SOAP LAKE — The telephone presented a challenge.

The telephone didn’t work, but that wasn’t the challenge. “An old rotary phone. From 1983,” Matt Brewer said. Brewer is a teacher at Rise Academy, the Soap Lake School District’s alternative high school, and a director of the Repair Cafe.

The Repair Cafe is designed to take things that don’t work, like an old telephone or a computer, and things that need repair, like a pair of pants, and fix them. The old rotary phone was one of the first projects.

Zander and Chase Northup were in charge of fixing it. “They had no idea how to use it.” Brewer said.

That did not stop the repair team. “We had to rewire some stuff,” Chase said, “and Mr. Brewer had to help us figure out how to use the (soldering iron) and stuff.”

“We both actually had to learn how to use the soldering iron, to be able to fix that,” Zander said. “Which was actually really fun to be able to learn how to do that.”

“We had it all fixed, and the piece that we were working on shattered,” Brewer said. “And we had to go replace it.”

“I’m kind of glad we had to replace it,” Chase said. “Because it made it look a lot nicer.”

“And then we had no way of testing whether or not our repairs worked, because we don’t have any wired phones in the building,” Brewer said. “We eventually found a jack, way off in the corner. We plugged it in and we got a busy signal.”

By all appearances the job was a success. “The lady has not brought it back, so I’m guessing it works,” Brewer said.

“I kind of want to call her, to ask her if she’s been using it, if it’s working all right,” Chase said.

Rise Academy students will work on things like small home appliances, computers and other tech. “We’ve got a young lady who’s learning sewing, so if it’s a clothing thing that needs to be repaired, she would be the person,” Brewer said.

Zander is working as an intern at a local business, learning to repair sewing machines. Other students are learning the basics of computer and tech repair, small engine repair and small home appliances.

The Repair Cafe was supposed to sponsor an open house March 19, but that will be postponed due to the school closure announced by Governor Jay Inslee last week.

Repair Cafe is being funded through a $2,000 grant from Microsoft, the first award through the Grant County Community Challenge. The company has committed $30,000 to Grant County to pay for micro-projects like the Repair Cafe.

“We invite the community to bring in their projects and their expertise,” Brewer said. The goal is to fix things, rather than throw them away, and teach kids some skills they can use.

“That’s the point of this whole project,” he added. “These kids are learning incredibly valuable skills — life skills.” Working at the Repair Cafe requires kids to stick with their projects and finish them to the best of their ability. The whole goal of Rise Academy is to teach kids how to perform at real-world standards, he said.

Zander and Chase are in charge of assigning projects. “We try not to give an item that the person is not familiar with,” Zander said.

“It’s definitely fun to participate in, when you like to repair things,” Zander said.

The Repair Cafe is still in its early stages, Brewer said, and he is hoping to expand the training it provides to kids and the items that can be repaired.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].