Oh what a night!

15 of us all dressed in our best ready to party the night away at the returning Slough CVS Awards Nights.

We had been shortlisted under Group of the Year award category and although I knew we had a good chance we were up against some great competition (some of whom were our task owners!).

The night started as all good nights do, with a dressed up crowd sipping on gin n’ juice with a chocolate fountain. Though the late arrivals (Nisha, Ricky and I) missed the chocolate fountain!

As we entered the lobby area we bumped into our ever so glamorous team members Jean, Ruth and Agni. Wow! Did you see how amazing Jean looked!!

After having our 1st photo taken (1st out of around 100!) we made our way into the function hall to see the rest of the gang at our tables.

Each and everyone looked amazing!

Slough CVS team opened the event with key note speakers and a warm up act from Ramesh, CEO!

And dinner is served… a delicious medley of South Asian food and a tray of fish..

We nearly won on the raffle! 170 is close to 180 right? But not close enough.

Then onto the dancing act from Creative Academy!

Dr Jim and Dom were an amazing double act on stage presenting the ceremony. A few drinks were consumed by now so can’t tell you how funny they were but I know I laughed (a lot!)

First up were the Business Impact Awards followed by our much awaited Volunteer of the Year Award. We had our very own Sutyee shortlisted for this category for all that she does to support junior parkrun.

Drum roll please……

The award goes to…. Cindy! Well done Cindy…

The highly commended award goes to SUTYEE!!! Wohooo! Applause please as she stands to receive her certificate

Next onto Public Sector Partnership Award

Now the one we were waiting for - Group of the year

First up is a short film on each group nominated. As always, each time GoodGym is mentioned there are cheers all round. Pipe down GoodGym!

And I am delighted to tell you that we received awards in 2 categories

Highly Commended for Making a difference to the environment

Winners of Designing innovative projects!

Even more applause 👏

What a night. It ended with a disco that had everyone up and dancing

We had such a great time! Uber Ricky dropped us home and somehow 'stole' the award which left me in a panic thinking i'd lost it! Luckily the thief returned in the morning with award intact!

Enjoy the photos.. we certainly enjoyed the night

... Wrapper and sorting it!

Another of our regular visits to Terracycle at Pinewood Nurseries today.

One of our newer members Jess made her first visit to Pinewood today and joined the crew cutting, washing and drying crisp packets.

Brenda got stuck into packing the crisp clean, dry packets into a box ready to be sent to The Crisp Packet Project for the homeless.

There was no cutting corners for Sandy, Gauri, Emily, Sara and Pam who all got to grips with the scissors and washing up bowls of soapy water to cut, wash and lay out to dry the crisp packets.

In the meantime, Jen worked her way through packing up the coffee pods, before turning to confectionary wrappers.

Brenda moved from feeling crispy to 'crumb'ling in the heat whilst sorting the biscuit wrappers.

After a 'United' effort from all, it was 'Time Out' to 'Breakaway' before we all 'Flake'd out.

We were back with our friends at the Jubilee Riverside Centre Slough for a pretty oarsome task this weekend, which saw us split into three teams. One group tackled weeding and gardening outside the centre's entrance, another were litter picking along the riverbank, and a third were in kayaks collecting rubbish which had made its way into the water.

The day was also a call for a bit of celebration too. Firstly we congratulated Jenny for reaching her 50 good deeds milestone - which is particularly impressive as she only joined us in February and for many months was notching up her deeds during lockdown.

Secondly we welcome Brenda, who is fellow GoodGymer Jen's mum, to our GG Slough family. It was great to have her with us for her first-ever task, and to meet the wonderful mother of a much-valued member of our team.

The morning felt more like a fun day out than a hard task, despite us proving every litter bit helps as we collected eight bags of rubbish, which was mainly made up of beer cans! We also recovered a shopping trolley from the river itself in a strategic and co-ordinated effort which involved the teams in the water and along the riverbank working together to get the cart out of there safely and securely.

If that wasn't enough, cannoe believe it, we also managed to collect a dinghy full of rubbish out of the river itself!

A fantastic day was had by all, as the end result saw a cleaner river and its nearby paths free from rubbish, the centre's garden beds weeded and neatened up - with Jen making light work of cutting back an overgrown tree, and the chance for us big kids to get back out onto the water, brush up on our kayaking skills and have the odd race too!