Our last session of the year brings us to Stoke Park Active and an indoor Christmas present wrapping task. A perfect end to the year.

Clare our task owner cum GoodGym member had given us a Christmas cracker of a task - we were pack some treats into little goody bags, wrap them up, tidy up the venue and get it all ready for the panto that Clare and her amazing team are doing for the children that come along to their sessions.

As the weather had made it virtually unsafe to run on the footpaths due to flooding and muddy conditions, we actually missed the run part and cracked in with the task part....but I had a master plan....there was still a fitness session involved that would earn the team their treats.

So after we had done this and done that, shifted that chair and this table we were ready to rumble.. I had prepared a 12 days of Christmas fitness challenge with a reducing time frame.... 1 burpee, 2 push ups, 3 prisoner squats and so on all the way to 12 star jumps. I thought I had demo'd it all really well....but the videos show that VR was needed as some level of cheating did take place...and some level of mis counting..but it was all in the name of fun and both teams did an amazing job!

As well as the 12 days exercises we had a moves based Chinese whisper type of game! Less said about this the better! And the finale was a strict game of instructions! Fail the instruction - you got kicked out - I had final sleigh on it!

Oh and we had a bit of karaoke!

Thank you to our amazing 14 volunteers for coming along to our last session of 2023! and a very warm welcome to Ali

Let's review our tree-mendous 2023

January

We had double deeds galore as we kick started the January challenge and spent some time guarding the iconic knife angel, and not forgetting a whole load of parkrunning

February

All you seed is love as we helped Artful Hub on numerous tasks this month helping to get them set up in their new unit

March

We made a sweeping statement as we continued to help the Ujala Foundation with their community garden and lets not forget Jean obtaining her 100th Good Deed

April

We had a Ra-leigh good time as launched our partnership with Raleigh and enjoyed some Easter treats.. Jen and Gauri will remember the shed sort out for Shin! We really did like to 'move it move it'

May

We saw some fashion items that were a blast from the past as we continued to help Thames Hospicecare. New tasks were starting to pile up as we started helping some local churches like St Paul's and St Mary's

June

The plot thickened allot this month as the weeds just kept on growing on our allotments task with Home Start. Lucky we had some keen gardeners in the team with Pam, Peter and Jen...plus a handy app to decipher a weed from a plant! This is the month that we built a stronger relationship with Slough Refugee Support and Mehdi, Hamid, Mohammed and Eshan joined us.

July

Hi Five to us all as we celebrated our 5th birthday! Our first group race at Beat the Boat was knot too shabby!

August

Pew..we did it! Plenty of outdoor tasks as we basked in the summer sunshine helping St Mary's Primary school with painting and gardening as we well as plenty of gardening tasks at St Paul's

September

More swede times as our gardening skills grew!

October

Our GhoulGym was out in full force with our Hallo-clean tasks

November

Didn't we win an award (or two??).... Group of the Year...lets just leave it there

December

Wrapping it up now with our networking natters, keeping the rein(deer) as bay and getting some indoor tasks with Shin and Clare

We clocked up a huge 498 tasks in 2023 by 51 members

So what's going on in 2024? PLENTY!

Yule be sorry if you don't attend our January sessions to get your good deeds and km's logged. Our target for January is 55 good deeds and 750km's. I've kept it realistic this year as we do have a natural drop in our good deeds overs the years so hopefully this target feels more achievable.

This is our first community mission on Friday 5th January 10.30 - 11.30 at Slough Outreach shop

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/sorting-out-clothes

We then have a double deed Sunday with volunteering at Salt Hill junior parkrun and then a litter pick (we will actually be doing this every Sunday in January, so plenty of good deeds to be had)

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/parkrun-volunteer-f8984433-06c5-488b-ba7c-6d295b22be77

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/community-litter-pick-740a7a7f-0aaa-47d6-870f-9af261ddf7f2

Then our first Monday eve group session is on Monday 8th January helping Slough Outreach again with a clothes sort out

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/helping-slough-outreach-at-new-unit-in-cippenham-b336979c-bdeb-49f9-9f5d-888cb2290ff5

The following Monday we have a task that requires LOTs of volunteers, so if there is only one Monday that you can do please do this one. Its helping the Not Just a Store - waste warriors shop on the Bath Rd with setting up the Pet Food area.

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/waste-warriors-helping-at-the-new-community-fridge-and-landfill-reduction-shop

So that's all folks...time to Ho Ho Home

Enjoy your rein-beers and have a great festive break.

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

This evening's task had so much going on! Firstly, a warm welcome to newcomers Tim, Sama and Hamid and the lovely ladies from GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead - Jess, Sophie and Sheila. Thank you all for coming along to the session and a special one at that.

Thank you to Chrissy for hosting our 5th birthday task at St Mary's Farnham Royal Church of England Primary School. We managed to get a fair few tasks completed tonight including the learning garden, the play area and the side garden.

Hat's off to Team Dr who with cutting hedge technology chopped back the shrubbery to expose the window and security camera! Everyone was rooting for him to cut it back as sometimes trees crowd and well, let's face it, someone has to grow! Well done to Sheila, Jess, Sophie, Nimi and Jenni who all worked really hard on clearing this area.

So good to have Keira back with us...it's been too long. Team Sutyee had Keira and Ruth weeding the playground area.

Whilst over in the learning garden Team Harsha had Jean, Abdulaziz, Mehdi, Hamid, Sama, Tim, Pam and Kam clearing up the bed edges and deciphering the weeds from the plants (thank goodness we have keen gardeners in the group who know the difference).

Peter took on the lone ranger task of removing all the weeds along the perimeter of the school! And what a phenomenal job he did too!

Forty odd minutes in and we were all done....everyone keen and eager for the fitness session (or maybe I just imagined that).

We had games, circuits, confusion, basketball hooping, leg exercises, (hatred for me)... you name it...we worked it tonight.

The finale were the cakes, sing song and speech (you'll be glad to know that I didn't sing...and only did a tiny speech).

Thank you so much to all 21 team members who made our 5th birthday task so special.

Now onto our summary of the year in action.

Hi Year 5

Five years in and what can I say that hasn’t been said before. This group only exists because of YOU and your dedication to GoodGym Slough. We have community in the heart of everything we do. We are diverse, we are open to all, we target groups that need the help and we do it all with such passion and love. And we continue to grow with new members joining us and finding new task owners.

Since launching in July 2018, we have tallied a total of 4240 Good Deeds! We’ve helped over 30 local groups and charities with tasks ranging from gardening to litter picking to flyering to painting to marshalling to packing and stacking, sorting and storing. You name it, we've done it.

So what have we been up to in the year leading to us turning 5...here is a little reminder in the only way we write with GoodGym - with puns!

• We gave a lidl help to local residents with shopping tasks;

• We were rooting for all our new gardening projects;

• We had a Ra-leigh good thyme at the spring, summer sessions at the allotments;

• Our art will always go on with the help we've given to Artful hub with indoor painting, leaflet distributing and what a crate job we did too with helping Eva move units;

• Jen did a great job of b'rambling on with her BBOWT tasks at Haymill Nature Reserve;

• Save - a - life : Surrender your knife was probably our most emotional task this year;

• We surfed the net-work with many networking events in Slough promoting all things GoodGym Slough;

• Christmas was a time for happy holly-days as we finished the year with our annual hamper wrap with Slough Outreach and called it a day till the infamous January challenge!;

• We marshalled our way through the year with tasks at junior parkrun as the cheer squad, sleighing with Santa at the Burnham Parade, stalling it at the Cippenham fayre and sharpening our knowledge with the Knife Angel task;

• The Golden Girls were formed after another epic task at Thames Hospice care. The jackets even made a cameo appearance at junior parkrun last Sunday;

• Let us spray with all the new Churches we have supported this year. From St Paul's to St Marys to St John the Baptist;

• Slow Ways or is it Slough Ways? We verified the route from Slough to Eton. Enjoyed a coffee in Eton then re-routed ourselves back to base;

• Acting like kids at the schools we helped tidy up (especially tonight);

• Decluttering Slough of the hoard of litter litter-ally everywhere!;

As for the races, this year we have glowed, beat a boat and run backwards (not literally). We started off with the Dorney 10k Glow in the Dark run at which Gauri did her first ever 10k distance. Followed by a little run around Paris with Ricky where he got his marathon PB and I ate loads of cakes at each water station. Loosely followed by a backwards route run in London with Harsha - never forget that night out! And our final escapade was a 10k run along the River Thames trying to beat a boat with Jenny, Claire and Ricky!

Reward with Awards

Most memorable task - Knife Angel

As 5 of us guarded the Knife Angel and guided visitors around the Angel... who could forget the mum that lost her son in a case of mistaken identity to a knife crime? Not a dry eye that day.

Most Impactful task - Slough Refugee Support

Our most impactful task this year have been the ones we have carried out with Slough Refugee Support English Class. The class participants have very much enjoyed doing something back for the community and 4 of their members have even joined us now on our weekly Group Runs.

Best Race - Beat the Boat

What a brilliant concept of a race, run by a local runner and delivered in a simple yet effective way. Ok, it's not a PB type of event but it was full of camaraderie, support and fun (and processo!)

Biggest contributor - Jen

Wow! what hasn't Jen done this past year? From group runs at both Slough and Windsor and Maidenhead, plus missions and task force ownership of the monthly task with BBWOT, she racked up the good deeds - WELL DONE JEN

Best Photography session - Allotments

Our monthly visit to the allotments is not only a pure strength session of digging, lifting, wheelbarrowing soil, it's also one where we get our best shots (photo type not drinking!)

Best Dressing award – Burnham Lions Christmas Fayre

We all looked adora-bell in our Santa hats and baubles

Best Grit and Effort award – Ujala Foundation garden sessions

So much to do such little thyme, pure effort was needed on this mini project back in March.

Best Community Award - King's Coronation Weekend - The Big Help Out

Our collaboration task with Slough Bid and St Mary's Church led to a 30 plus turnout including residents and local business on a litter pick around Slough Town centre.

Cheers to five years...here's to many more

So after 3 weeks on the artistic task at Artful Hub, we were running low on supplies so had to make a few decisions on tonight’s task which we went a big rouge on!

My memory can be a bit sketchy but I’m sure Eva asked us to use the white paint over the lime green areas that the yellow paint didn’t quite stretch to!

With a few last minute decisions made the white went on lovely with a few cloudy patches by Sandy and Gauri.

The remaining yellow was mixed with a blue to create a green! Thank goodness we remembered our primary colours from primary school! Nimi and Abdul did a remarkable job at creating the greeny clouds with white swirls.. the paint all put together by mixologist Harsha!

With so much artistic flare amongst the group tonight the end result was pretty amazing (considering we got off to a bad art!). We just hope Eva likes it!