Dusting and cleaning off our knowledge of books

16 Goodgymers helped their local community in Southwark
Andy
Maria Kostoulia
Andrada
Elena
Gemma
Isaac Beevor
Katy Hulm
Nathan Wood
Daryl Shaw
Nelly
Emma McNally
Sam Lefevre
Tim Wheatley
Vic
Olive
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Southwark

Wednesday 22nd November 2023

Credits
Maria Kostoulia
Maria Kostoulia

PHOTOGRAPHER

Isaac Beevor
Isaac Beevor

WALK LEADER

Daryl Shaw
Daryl Shaw

WALK LEADER

Sam Lefevre
Sam Lefevre

SESSION ORGANISER

REPORT WRITER

PHOTOGRAPHER

Olive
Olive

BACK MARKER

Find out about GoodGym TaskForce

Report written by Sam Lefevre (he/him)

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With the day off, Sam arrived nice and early to open up Old Spike as he welcomed in Andrada, Daryl, Elena, Gemma, Isaac, Katy, Maria, Nathan, Nelly, Olive (who reached her target for the year tonight), Phil and Tim! We even had newbie, Andy join us. Welcome Andy!

As we all gathered at Old Spike, Sam did his longer speech for Andy as he talked about the ways he can get involved with GoodGym further. After a few weeks of skipping the warm-up, Sam decided to do it tonight as the run to the task wasn't far. After the warm-up, everyone gave their answer to tonight's ice-breaker question.

Since it was International Men's Day over the weekend, Sam's ice-breaker question for tonight was: The theme of this year's International Men's Day is "Take action and stay healthy", can you give one practical tip for Men or male identify to stay mentally healthy? Secondly, who has been a big influential person in your life that is male/male-identifying?

For big influences, we had people's other halves, Dads, brothers, friends and even primary/secondary teachers made the list. In terms of tips, we had going out for a walk to clear your headspace, but the common theme was to be encouraged to talk about your feelings.


Finding salvation in cleaning

As we left Old Spike, Sam lead the way whilst Olive backmarked as we ran towards Peckham Rye Park and looped back at the cafe towards Nunhead. We did meet tens of runners running with Peckham Pacers. Yet, we got to Salvation Army on Nunhead Green just in time to meet Tiziana, Emma and Vic who met us there at the task.

With such a large group, Tiziana had to split us into two. One smaller group consisting of Daryl, Emma, Gemma, Nathan, Nelly and Olive were given the cleaning task. They took brooms, hoovers and cleaning cloths as they cleaned the charity shop/cafe's toilets, hallway, stairs and offices. Phil and Vic joined them in sweeping the charity shop as there were a few dusty corners. The rest of the team were upstairs in the library/bookshop space to sort out books in terms of their categories: Biography, Children's, Fiction and Thriller/Action.

The 40 minute session zoomed by and we managed to finish the cleaning, but there were still plenty of books to sort out. We will be back in three weeks' time to finish this task off and give the space another spruce up.

After our group photo, we said our goodbyes and ran literally 600 metres to get back to Old Spike for a lovely stretch before a few of us decided to go to the Old Nag's Head for a Guinness or two.


Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Firstly, we welcomed Alex for his first GoodGym session. It was a nice short dry run both ways. The task was manageable given the size of volunteers we had. Thanks to Olive for backmarking and ensuring no-one gets left behind. We will be back in 3 weeks!


Thank You to Tiziana

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tiziana for preparing all the equipment and tasks for us to do in advance! We're back in three weeks' time to finish what we started with the books!



Discuss this report
Jacqueline Francis

Sun 26th Nov 2023 at 3:01pm

Great ice-breaker Sam!

Join us on our next session

Southwark

Sorting & Stocking @ Borough Food Cooperative
🗓Tomorrow 10:30am

Tackles food insecurity and reuses surplus food to prevent food being thrown away!

Luana Cristina Clementino
One GoodGymer is going - 3 spaces left! 👀