Lorenzo

In a dark, dark city,
There was a dark, dark road,
And off that dark, dark road,
There was a dark, dark path,
And along that dark, dark path,
There was a dark, dark school,
And a dark, dark brook,
And a dark, dark nature reserve,
And dark, dark allotments.
And all of them were blighted by litter,
Blowing in from the dark, dark path.

It was certainly a dark, dark, cold, cold night for litter picking last night!

It was well worth wrapping up warm, donning our hi-vis and head torches and patrolling the paths and cycle ways of Boundary Brook area to clear up the litter and fly-tipping. It's a litter grot spot just where you wouldn't want one (I mean, we don't want them anywhere, but this is particularly bad) - by two primary schools, edging a waterway and a nature reserve, and one of the worst areas is right outside the Children's Allotment.

We filled a couple of dozen litter bags with masks, cans, newspapers, takeaway cartons, and all the usual litter suspects. More surprising were the lengths of carpet, kitchen sink and assorted other flytipping!

Welcome to GoodGym Megan!

Last night we blitzed the tidying and organising tasks at the Oxford Mutual Aid food bank. As a 7-days-a-week operation there's rarely time to pause and take stock due to the overwhelming need to get the food parcels prepared, so a GoodGym flash-mob every now and then helps to get everything back in order.

This week there have been lots of large donations in from other food banks and larders which needed sorting into crates of similar items then stored properly. Also, now that we're into the New Year all the leftover Christmas items needed to be organised so that they can be stored off site instead of taking up precious space in the hall.

We divided into teams and got to work:
* Lorenzo headed up a group sorting through all the recent food donations, crating them up with like-items and stacking them away in a more organised fashion.
* Rachael took her team to the kitchen to sort through the fresh fruit and veg and dispose of any that were too mushy/mouldy to send out, organising the fridges into expiry-date order, and giving the whole area a good clean, before moving on to portioning up bulk bags of pasta.
* Bethan's crew sorted through mountains of Christmas gifts, categorising by age of recipient, and then picking a few crates to remain at the hall as birthday gifts and labelling everything else up for off-site storage.
* Holly, Vicky and Ben did the heavy lifting, re-organising the tin-can corner to make more storage space. Hope your arm muscles aren't too achey this morning!
* Last, but not least, Dan tackled cardboard mountain, flattening the pile of boxes and crushing as many as possible into the recycling bin.

We've already had effusive thanks from the Oxford Mutual Aid organising team:

"This is is so, so helpful! Thank you thank you!"
"Thank you SO SO MUCH"
"I've just been in and everything looks like a dream."

Great work team. Well done!

New Year, New Wednesday delivery list at Oxford Mutual Aid.

In the last week OMA has managed to move a couple of dozen households off the waiting list for regular food deliveries, which is fantastic news! That has meant a bit of reorganisation of when people receive their parcels, so our packing list has changed a little in the last 2 weeks. In addition to that they now have extra delivery help from Pedal and Post, meaning that more parcels can get delivered earlier in the day. All of this means that although there were more emergency food parcels than usual to prepare (23 in total yesterday), we didn't have quite as much food preparation to do overall as we would usually on a Wednesday afternoon.

We finished up all the parcel prep, and then were able to get a head start on the sorting and organising jobs which we'd got in mind for our evening shift. It was really helpful to have time to get a system going before the larger group arrived, as there was a huge amount to get organised thanks to large deliveries from other food banks throughout the earlier part of the week. Most of the shifts at the food bank are so busy preparing food parcels that they can't find time for the unpacking and organinsing tasks, so it was really valuable to be able to get that done.

Team work = dream work

Thanks for the pics and tips about refill shops in Oxford and Abingdon!

Lorenzo found Wild Honey in Summertown has refills for soap and cleaning solutions in addition to the regular refill haunts at Flo's and East Oxford Market. Bethan got some cleaning solutions from the refill station in Abingdon. Ben Managed to grab some dry goods at OxUnboxed before it closed for Christmas earlier in the week, with many of their student volunteers going home for Christmas.

This evening four confused Goodgymers realised that a degree in engineering would be handy when covering boxes with Christmas paper.

**How much paper?? Where to fold?? Where to stick?? Why is there a flappy bit left over??

We DID manage to wrap boxes though, which were gratefully received by Christine at Project Shoebox. They will now be filled with goodies and distributed to refugees and shelters around Oxford.

Good work team!