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14 Goodgymers helped their local community in Southwark
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Southwark

Wednesday 23rd August 2023

Report written by Sam Lefevre (he/him)

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We waited outside for Andres (Javier) to close up Old Spike before heading in for 18:30. Yet, Sam had arrived earlier to do document checks for Diego and Becky. Diego is just getting back into the swing of being active, but Becky was up for joining us on our group run tonight! Welcome Becky!

On a warm and muggy day, waiting inside Old Spike wasn't ideally as we welcomed Alastair, Alex, Becky, Daryl, Emily, Emma, Gemma, Paulin, Mikhail Nathan and Tim as Sam quickly went through the GG intro speech before heading outside to get warm on the Green!

After our warm-up, Sam's ice-breaker for tonight was a two-way (split into three questions) question, which was: Two days ago was World Entrepreneur Day, what would you be an entrepreneur of / who is your favourite entrepreneur? or Since the Fringe is on, who is your favourite comedian?

Many went for the comedian question of which I remember Kevin Bridges, but we now know Tim would be an entrepreneur of weird and wonderful ice-cream flavours and Alex's favourite joint entrepreneur and comedian is Elon Musk...


Ugly? No, just brutalists

With Daryl leading the way, running along Peckham Rye Park before heading up Dunstans Road and heading up the hill on Underhill Road, we just made it to the top at Ellie was arriving. We also met Steve and Magda who had arrived by foot and bike, respectively.

Ellie was so glad to have so many GoodGymers come along tonight as she had plenty of tasks. After saying all the tasks, we split the group into activities with newbie Becky, Nathan and Steve taking the woodchip moving and weeding task. Alastair, Gemma, Mikhail and Tim were on water-running duties as they filled water cans and buckets from the tap near the estate to take it to the orchard to water the growing apple trees and saplings.

Meanwhile, we had the rest following Ellie for sanding and painting duties: Emily and Emma were helped paint a cage yellow to beautify the community centre whilst Magda and Paulin sanded wooden blocks/planks that will be used as planting signs when the planters for the allotment have been built. Alex and Daryl were in charge of painting these wooden signs with blackboard black paint.

The 40 minutes seems to zoom by as we called it at 19:55 as Ellie had a surprise for us. On Wednesdays, the community centre has a once-a-week food bank and not all the food was taken, so to ensure there's no food waste, she offered it to us. We took home a variety of breads, apples and courgettes.

Since we were at Dawson's Heights, we couldn't resist to walk over to Dawson's Hill to see the amazing views of London before running back with our bags of goodies to our starting point just on time for 20:30 (after a quick stretch).


Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Firstly, a massive thank you to my taskforce team, especially Daryl for leading the run after my injury (did I mentioned that yet....) on Monday night and to Paulin for backmarking the runs. Thank you to the rest of you for tackling the uphill run to the task before taking on heavier tasks than others, so thank you for gritting through it all. You were all thoroughly rewarded with food and great views at the end of it!


Thank You to Ellie

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 Ellie for having a variety of tasks for us to do from watering to weeding and painting to woodchip moving! Also, a big shoutout to you for tackling food waste as the GoodGymers enjoyed the added bonus of a snack / meal for the journey home. We will be back to help support the allotment project if not in September then in October.


Session Leader
This task supported
Arbor
"Connecting communities through stronger connections with nature”
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Attendees
Becky White
Alastair Bain
Alex Bowring
Gemma
Nathan Wood
Daryl Shaw
Emma McNally
Sam Lefevre
Tim Wheatley
Magda Bujar
Emily Waller
Steve Lee
Mikhail Amran
Join us on our next session

Southwark

Sorting & Stocking @ Borough Food Cooperative
🗓Tomorrow 2:00pm

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

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