Ealing Repair Cafe receives The King’s Award for Voluntary Service

Ealing Repair Café, a group of volunteers based in Ealing have been awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service for 2025.

This is the highest award a local voluntary group can receive in the UK and is equivalent to an MBE. Ealing Repair Café’s primary focus is to encourage and facilitate clothes and textiles mending to inspire and encourage people to get the most out of their clothes.

We also create and teach upcycling projects to make something useful out of otherwise unwanted fabrics, (e.g. draught excluders, t-shirt bags). Items we create are donated to local groups such as food banks, churches, Age UK Ealing.

Ealing Repair Café is part of the Ealing Transition initiative, which focuses on re-inventing the way we use energy and produce energy. This includes the way we source our food, our clothes, design our buildings, generate power and much more.

Ealing Repair Café is one of 231 local charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. Their work, along with others from across the UK, reminds us of all the ways fantastic volunteers are contributing to their local communities and working to make life better for those around them.

The King’s Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognise outstanding work by local volunteer groups to support their communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate Her Late Majesty The Queen’s Golden Jubilee and was continued following the accession of His Majesty The King. 2025 marks the third year of The King’s Award for Voluntary Service. Recipients are announced annually on 14th November, The King’s Birthday.

Award winners this year are wonderfully diverse and include volunteer groups from across the UK, such as a group of dog walkers clearing up their local area in Kincardineshire; a group providing unique flying experiences for people with disabilities in Hampshire. A group providing support to veterans and their families across Welsh Valley communities; a group running a museum and non-profit railway In Belfast, preserving Northern Ireland’s railway heritage.

Representatives of Ealing Repair Café will receive the award crystal and certificate from Sir Ken Olisa, Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London in the coming months. In addition, two volunteers from Ealing Repair Café will attend a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in May and June 2026, along with other recipients of this year’s award.

Mary Horesh said: “We’re proud to be recognised for the incredible efforts of our volunteers—supporting local communities in extending the life of garments, preventing items from ending up in landfill, and creating a welcoming space that participants say enhances their social and mental well-being.”

Notes

1. Lord-Lieutenants represent the monarch in each of the UK’s ceremonial counties.
2. This year there are 231 recipients of The King’s Award Voluntary Service from across the UK and Channel Islands.
3. More information on the recipients and the Award can be found at https://kavs.dcms.gov.uk/
4. Full details on how to nominate are available at https://kavs.dcms.gov.uk/  
5. Nominations for the 2026 award opened on the 1st September 2025.