Packing food in bags for collection and delivery, offloading the crate and stocking the shelves. We ran out of some food Helping to keep fit and exercise through helping and interacting with other volunteers met some volunteers today it was busy today but relaxing at the same time. I enjoyed some cake . The leaders made it welcoming for all and asked me to bring my sis in law again !!! Some food parcels were collected.

No supermarket delivery but two cages full of donations and some uncollected packages to be resshelved. Linda and Helen had arrived early so got stuck into sorting one of the cages, AJ came in and took on the collections and Sabinah arrived with her own assistant (actually her Sister-In-Law and hopefully future GG member) so they took charge of the other cage.

Everything date checked and put away there was still a little time left for a bit of brief tidying and decanting tea bags into smaller bags for distribution next week. Nice teamwork everyone 😊

Note from task leader.. Extending a huge welcome to our two New Members Sabinah and Richard who arrived at Frenford Food bank with bright smiles, energy and enthusiasm for the task ahead. Both made a huge contribution helping to pack food parcels. Our Katherine also showed great enthusiasm and tenacity for fulling her commitment to the mission after tending to an injury sustained during her run. Between us and the Frenford staff 50 families will manage a little better this week. - Linda Sharman

I enjoyed my first session Linda was very helpful and everyone made me feel welcome and relaxed atmosphere I enjoyed packing and moving around to keep fit and exercise. Thank you for the opportunity to support vulnerable families in our communities. - Sabinah Adewole.

We have missed our AJ at Frenford Food Bank while she has been off marshaling at the Paris Olympics. Our "bits and bobs" shelf had got into much disarray in her absence. Always relishing the chance to create order from disorder she got to work making a big difference in very little time. Welcome back AJ!

Meanwhile Ed got on with sorting and stacking the recent big donation from the local scouts and Linda sorted through a big black bag containing an anonymous donation most of which was years past the BBF date and had to be thrown out. We all know BBF doesn't always mean its gone bad but chocolate from 2020 and milk powder 7 years past its date is really not on 🙄

Restricted funds and storage issues has meant biscuits are no longer on our list and the shelves had to be cleared and cleaned off. Shifting the packets led to much "intellectual" discussion about, best biscuits, boring biscuits, dunking biscuits, the infiltration if the American Orio biscuit and when is a biscuit not a biscuit? To be fair we were in the company of a very helpful 13 year old volunteer so conversation had to be kept light. 😁

Starting with a huge welcome to the Frenford Foodbank team for our new member Gabriella, recruited from our local Parkrun she arrived keen to make a start and was soon picking, packing and generally making herself a very valuable member of the team.

Julia and Kathryn made themselves very useful packing bags and teaming up to shift heavy crates together...although I am not convinced Kathryn giving someone bonus tinned pasta and chocolate mini rolls was a good swap for not having the right sized nappies but it made us laugh.

It was lovely to see Irina again who slipped into the team quietly getting on with things and doing a great job...so quiet I forgot to take her photo, sorry Irena, if its any consolation I also forgot to get a photo of myself 🤦‍♀️

Our regular couple of power packers Herman and Tina proved invaluable as ever completed a very efficient team.

With the steady stream of us arriving at different times and working alongside a couple of Frenfords own volunteers, things ticked over so smoothly we were finished early and had energy to spare to off load a supermarket delivery.

The only hitch was not having initial access to the storage cages so the packages had to be shifted about in crates then lifted on to the cages when the spare store key arrived but no one seemed to mind as we worked together and got the job finished.

The task owner was very pleased and sends a big thank you for our help.

Good job GoodGym. 😁

Well, I was challenged to use the term Tea Bagging in the title - consider it done.

Its always worth putting out a call for help with the midweek shelf filling at Frenford Food Bank as you never know who might have a random day off. Joining regulars Ed and Linda were todays "randoms" Kathryn and Sharon, very helpful they were too. We soon got all the supermarket order and Scouts donations out on the shelves. There was even time to spare to do the little odd jobs of relabeling shelves and decanting big boxes of teabags into smaller portions. All rubbish quickly cleared and spare crates tidied away outside and we were done.

Nice 😊