12 GoodGymmers came together this week, including first timer Miran - welcome Miran! On foot or with pedal-power, we made our way up the short but oh-so-steep climb to the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project (BUCFP) where we were greeted with a mountain of bedding that had been donated, and that needed sorting into sizes so that they can easily be allocated to those in need.

After some time deliberating over the difference between single, double or king sizes (check out the photos for the answer...) we made fantastic progress - sorting, folding and storing hundreds of sheets, duvet covers, mattress protectors and pillows in just half an hour.

The Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project provides practical support, education, advice and much more to those in poverty, in poor living conditions, benefit claimants, the unwaged, pensioners, families and those on low incomes and suffering social exclusion and poor wellbeing.

Our Tuesday group run session was at the BMECP Centre – The Black & Minority Ethnic Community Partnership which is a busy centre hosting a number of projects helping Black and Minority Ethnics.

Thirsty of Good Deeds and excited about a group reunion in 2026, a last minute downsized group of brave Brighton GoodGymers disregarded the bad weather to get out and run, walk or cycle to help out BMECP with a challenging deep cleaning mission.

Once our welcoming host, Mustafa', showed us the way and where to find the few very essential tools, we spit in three groups to champion the mission with creativity. At Task One: A deep cleaning for high raised and moulded window frames: Liam, Rosie, Stefania and Christophe; At Task Two: Defrosting of ice-aged 😊 freezers with a steaming kettle: Sarah and Ben; and, at Task 3: General clearance and tidy-up of a dark, and seemingly forgotten, corner of the storage room: Sonam, Ruth, and new GoodGymer Steve. Welcome to the Do Good-Get Fit club, mate!

It was a sparkling good action and well deserved good deed that will contribute to the GoodGym January Challenge - From the 1st to the 31st of January, across the country, we are going to walk, run and cycle to complete as many good deeds as we can!

All good deeds and distance we record on Strava will go towards our community target of 4500 good deeds, and 60,000km covered nationwide.

HERE’s what next in our area calendar. If ever there was a reason to join us, this is it 🙌.

This Tuesday, seven of us headed to Brighton Youth Centre again for a task that promised ‘moving fun action’. In GoodGym style, that turned into a full-body workout featuring sofas, cushions, cabinets, giant boards, and several floors’ worth of stairs.

We started by hauling furniture and sofa pillows up those multiple floors, honing our pivoting and manoeuvring skills from the last time we paid a visit. Then came a deep dive into the mysterious workings of power drills as we freed shelves from their wooden casings. We then hoiked the remains into the lift for their journey up to the (busy!) skate park to be repurposed and, by the sounds of it, reassembled(?!).

Outside, in classic UK November fashion, the weather treated us to rain and hail as we battled big wooden boards over to the bins. Sometimes with brute force, sometimes with the saving grace of a rolling trolley.

In between all the heavy lifting, we managed to get lost between floors (more than once), locked out of several rooms (trapping Annette’s beanie hat in one) and learned the increasingly odd system of codes needed to activate different lifts - some of us needing to link them to different historical events to be able to memorise them.

And, during one of the ‘we’re locked out’ journeys down the stairwell to find some help, I spotted a text announcing that my niece had just been born! Definitely a GoodGym mission I won’t forget anytime soon, a ‘where were you when...’ moment for the books :-)

Great work GG-ers - Brighton Youth Centre is clearer and looking better than ever!