We had a fab team of five coming together to join Tina for the session at St. Martin's Church to sort through their clothing donations store. The staff use this to support local people experiencing challenges such as homelessness, by providing helpful toiletries, a range of clothing and blankets.

It was great to be asked back and help organise key items after lots of recent donations had really filled up the storage space. We boxed up all clothing by size then set aside surplus items and bagged them up for local charity shops.

Our many hands made light work and we were soon back in the clothing store packing in the labelled crates in neat rows. All in all, fab teamwork, great impact and as always, such a welcoming environment for a Goodgym session!

We headed to St. Patrick’s Church on the Dudley Road to meet Nancy, fellow Goodgymer and hosting the evening’s session. The warm welcome was especially appreciated by those of us caught in the horizontal rain and strong winds!

It was great to welcome Thea to Goodgym for the first time and together with Nancy, Amy, Miriam & myself, we all made for a great decluttering team! With a mix of sorting items to be donated, ordering things by theme, and labelling to some beautiful music playing (thanks to Nancy for DJ-ing!) we were all in the zone and soon made a lot of progress. We were all super happy with the corridor now clear and the items nicely boxed up in the porch with full inventories!

And not to forget… lots of recyclables, so we all did the big bin jobs together, cold and dark by this point, but with us all mucking in, it took just a few minutes! We can’t wait to return to St. Patrick’s and continue helping with jobs like this and huge thanks again to Nancy for facilitating. 😊

Tonight we welcomed Hannah to GoodGym for first time and we also had Joanne come along who was visiting from GG Exeter.

Four of the group ran to the task from the Good Intent and the others met us at the session. Laura warmly greeted us and it was on with the task.

We had to fill wooden frames with compost then cover the area around them with woodchipping, hence the pun thought up by James. Well actually we didn't just 'chip away' at the task in the end, we completed the whole thing! It was a really great job done which Laura more than appreciated :)

Once done it was time for a group photo then the group scattered, some running and some walking.

Eve had a refreshing, breezy run from the city centre down the canal to Selly Oak train station. I was ready with 150 Goodgym flyers for us to distribute between us. Off we went and covered big student streets like Dartmouth Road, Hubert Road, Heeley Road and Exeter Road! An hour or so in and we were done.

Slightly soggy stomp around Selly Oak, but the friendly local vibe and good chats kept our spirits high! Eve’s mission kept her streak going and it took me nicely over my daily 10,000 steps target.

📮🌟 Look out for our next Goodgym flyering mission soon!