On a cold (but dry!) December evening, 14 GoodGymers made their way to the tool library in Kemptown. Once there they were greeted by a cheery Gary and approximately a hundred crates of random tools in various states of rust.

The team soon got to work sorting the various items into boxes, and slowly but surely the room was transformed from a junk shop into a workshop.

Stefania then led us in a few rounds of squats/lunges etc., and then we went off into the night - some to the pub for taskforce strategising, others to a well-earned dinner.

Welcome new member Claudio!

A cold fast run led our evening to the warm welcome of our yesterday’s host: the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project. BUCFP was set up in 1981 and is a registered charity providing practical support, education, advice and much more to the unemployed and those in poor living conditions, benefit claimants, the unwaged, pensioners, families and those on low incomes in Brighton & Hove. The centre is run by volunteers for the benefit of all users, alongside a small team of part time paid workers.

All are welcome!

The centre is organising several festive events, including a ‘Community Christmas Lunch‘ with activities and presents on the 13th December and a ‘Families Christmas Party‘ on the 15th December. Lots of presents needed to be wrapped for the event’s raffle and this was our task yesterday! What a fun session, really. Reminded my childhood when my favourite entertainment was apparently to wrap-up everything in the house making to find things a real challenge for my parents 😊

We enjoyed fully wrapping presents and we ended up our session with a present ourselves, leaving the centre with a big smile on our faces and a loaf of rustic bread – surplus food. A nice welcome to new member Patrizia

A grand welcome was given to new members Sarah and Stefan at yesterday GoodGym’s session at the Fitzherbert hub helping the Real Junk Food Project.

A running stroll on the seafront and high knees step ups the stairs enriched our fitness session on route to the venue. And once there, … surprise! We found some construction work-in-progress but, regardless, the unstoppable Brighton GoodGymers managed to clean safely all the exposed surfaces, swept and mopped all the floors in a blink of an eye, by equipping themselves with helmets – not these ones not 😊, but yes indeed with all the available brooms, brushes, dust pans, backets and mops!

We also extended the job to the neighbouring Brighton Table Tennis Club to make our cleaning session more fulfilling. It was a grand group, so with no surprise we finished off everything very quickly to get ready for the follow up entertainment: The Quiz night at the Kempt pub.