A huge thanks to Pastor Charmaine, not only for all she does in terms of organising, but for her delicious sandwiches and mac and cheese. Shoutouts go to Abim, Emmanuel, Gloria, Bola, Ola, Susannah and also church members who are not GoodGym members…yet 😄

A great time had by all. Some good gym members also helped to fix Pastor’s fence after cleaning up. Unfortunately we were too busy holding ladders etc to get a photo 😄

Once again, we had a team from GoodGym helping out at FoodCycle this week. With Gill on food collection, Martin in the kitchen and Neill and Abdulrahman hosting alongside the other FoodCycle volunteers a delicious meal was served up to the guests.

We arrived at the temple at 4.30 to find it almost empty apart from the two people in the kitchen who we would be helping. Putting on our headscarves and washing our hands we asked what we needed to do. They were waiting for a group to arrive from St Mary's church youth group. But 5 o'clock came and there was no sign of them. By 5.20 they were still not there and it was decided that we should clean up the kitchen and help pack away the rice and side dishes. Dani started washing up and Gill was putting away the unused ingredients when there was a noise at the door and a group of 9 or ten young people arrived with their leaders. Dani and Gill made them welcome and showed them where to wash their hands and put on head coverings, before showing them to the kitchen. They watched the cooking demonstration and we all ate the biryani rice, pakora, chutney and raita.Then Gill, after requests from the youth leaders, took them upstairs to the worship area and, drawing on her previous skills as a teacher, gave them an impromptu talk about Guru Garanth Sahib and other traditions while Dani stayed in the kitchen to wash and tidy up. At the end of the session we were given a take away tub of more delicious rice and dahl for our partners to enjoy tomorrow.

Today we were on duty at Luton Town Football Club where they were hosting a Job Fair. As old hands our main responsibility was to ask for feedback of the attendees as they left the Eric Morecambe suite. it was great to be helping alongside some if the staff from LTFC. The suite was soon buzzing with people talking with potential employers and we got the ipads and QR codes ready for the feedback surveys. It was interesting to hear people's positive comments and while Neill and Omar kept busy on the door Gill took on the task of providing the employer reps with hot and cold drinks. The day got busier as there was a huge queue of people waiting to attend - by the end of the fair we had seen around 600 people in total. Omar asked who Eric Morecambe is that the room (and stand) was named after which had Gill explaining about the 1970s comedy show and then had her singing Bring Me Sunshine and doing "that dance"! I think Omar and some of the attendees thought she'd lost the plot!!! By the end of the event Matt was really appreciative of our help and commented on the great customer service. Thanks team... job well done.

This week's group run took us to Manor Park for a litterpick. The river Lea runs through this park and was the focus of our efforts as there was a lot of litter collected in the bushes between the road and the river, and quite a bit washed up on the river bank from recent high waters.

With a small team of 4 we collected an impressive 12 large bags of rubbish as well as a buggy and a hubcap from a thorough rummage in the bushes.

Leaving the area looking satisfyingly cleaner and ready for spring nesting 🦆 🪹 🕊️ without all the litter, we finished our session with a well-paced run back to our start point.

The last Saturday in January saw 5 Goodgymers team up with Kevin from ABCD-IN-LUTON and Friends of Leagrave Park to tackle yhe first community litterpick of the new year. We accumulated 20 bags of rubbish and got a glimpse of a beautiful King fisher on the banks of the river Lea. Well done to all that took part.