Menz Shed’s Mike Gast, left, and Myles Prebble inside the refurbished facilities in Leamington.
The arrival of an AED at Leamington’s Cambridge Community Menzshed late last year has been welcomed by shed president Mike Gast.
Cambridge Community Menzshed members welcomed a new AED to their site recently. Pictured around the AED are Rotarians Laurie Graham and Bill Robinson, centre, and Cambridge Menzshed president Mike Gast, left.
The AED (artificial external defibrillator) was donated by the Cambridge Rotary Club just before the holiday season kicked in. It was the second of two the club has placed in the community. Rotary International’s charitable arm, the Rotary Foundation, met the cost of around $3000 each.
The first of the two was delivered to Kids in Need Waikato a couple of months earlier.
The AED was delivered to the Menzshed by the Rotary Foundation’s chair for Cambridge Rotary Bill Robinson, and Cambridge Rotary Club president Laurie Graham.
After an extensive renovation to the 122-year-old Leamington Dairy Factory building in Carlyle Street, the Cambridge Community Menzshed opened in February 2025. The Waipā District Council-owned building is leased to the community-oriented group.
There were around 27 Menzshed members at the time it opened. Gast told The News last week that at last count, there were 121 members, all from Cambridge.
He said one of the first jobs for 2026 is to affix the AED to the back of the building so that the wider public have access to it.
“We have negotiated with council on that… getting it up on the outside of the shed will be one of our first projects of the year.”
The Menzshed and Rotary Cambridge have several shared members, and it was through those contacts that the AED ended up being offered to the shed.
Gast said the shed had been open on weekdays from 8.30am to midday throughout its first year, but suggested they may extend to opening on some afternoons this year.
“We get about half of the membership coming along at any of the events we run day-to-day. Some members work on their own projects, but we also welcome people coming in and bringing us items they might want us to repair,” he said.
“We don’t take in electronics, but we do accept things like tables and chairs that might need repair work done. We have the equipment and the skills. One of the earliest things we had in was a felled log … we chopped it into slices and turned it into a table.”
