Social Dis-tin-cing

It seems like everything is upside-down at the moment (what day is it? Does it even matter?) but the Birmingham Central Foodbank has to keep running – and its role is more important than ever. Located at Birmingham City Church, the foodbank is just a five-minute walk from our usual meeting place, 1000 Trades, so this is very much a local task for our group.

Owing to social distancing guidelines we were in a larger room than normal and GoodGym volunteer numbers were restricted to four: Liam, who led this task; Dave; Laura; and me. Together with regular volunteers from the foodbank and Matt, who managed the session, we all pitched in to process an incredible 90 boxes of donations.

The task comprised weighing the trays and boxes of donated food, sorting mixed donations into food groups (tins of beans, cartons of juice, etc), checking the best-before dates for each item and writing them in more visible letters on the packaging, then stacking the crates on the stockroom's shelves ready for the foodbank service.

Normally we see a huge variety in the products to sort, but on this particular day almost every box contained the same items, all from a large corporate donation. While this made the job of categorising easier, I think we all dreamt of tins of kidney beans and UHT milk afterwards...

In two hours we got through over a ton of food and a lot of energy. The GoodGym training for Community Missions during the COVID-19 outbreak states that volunteers should not take public transport to the task, so Laura and I had no choice but to run the 14.5km round trip. Finally, all those GoodGym Group Runs have paid off!

We're hoping to be back at the foodbank next Monday – sign up now.