The Porch Day Centre have been providing day-long support for homeless and vulnerably housed people wanting to move forward in their lives for over 35 years. They focus on housing, health, wellbeing, education and employment; providing healthy food, showers, laundry, learning skills, work related skills and opportunities for development. Each Christmas The Porch provide Christmas lunch and presents, and a warm, safe venue for the day. This year they are also providing blankets, hot water bottles, thermos flasks and torches.

Demand for the centre's services keeps growing, and they are now providing breakfasts and extending their opening hours. With the rising cost of gas and electricity their costs were rising even before they extended their hours, so this year's Christmas fundraising campaign is more important than ever.

Having seen their plea on social media for help to deliver leaflets advertising their Warmth and Welfare Christmas Fundraiser, GoodGym Oxford sprung into action. It was the coldest day of the year, so we were a smaller group than usual, but it definitely focused the mind on how much we appreciated our warm homes to go back to, and how bleak it would be to be homeless. Suitably layered-up against the bitter cold and fueled with mulled cider, we leafleted around the Iffley Fields area (some excellent Christmas decorations on display already), then also managed quite a few of the roads west of Magdalen Road.

Between us we got 736 leaflets delivered - 105 per GoodGymer!

Joe plans to do another 110 over the weekend, and with the aid of the wider GoodGym Oxford community we hope we'll get about another 500 delivered over the next week. If you feel moved to donate to support the work of The Porch this winter you can do so here.

This group task took us to over 6000 Good Deeds done in Oxford - Great work team!