Six GoodGymers met at the Langham storage unit to help with the task of cleaning crates of cans for the Foodbank. The charity was in urgent need of bale crates to shelve the large volume of products being donated, in order to meet the high food demand caused by the effects of the Covid 19 crisis.
We first shifted crates out of the warehouse into a socially distanced open space. Then thoroughly cleaned the containers and the contents and stacked them for dispatch in vans to the central Colchester sites. Our remit was to sort and clean all shelf loads of 2021 baked beans, then move on to tinned meat. That was a lot of beans! But we rose to the task with the usual GoodGym gusto and spent over three hours with heads down, cloths in hand and a strong detergent to shift the nasty bits. There was the usual uplifting chatter with its not-so-usual miscellany of stuff. This morning included the joys and griefs of eating corned beef and spam, the hunting and scavenging techniques of hyenas and the constituents of a FODMAP diet. We all learnt some things! We were joined part way through by Andrew, Chair of the Trustees and other volunteers. Together we achieved a substantial pile of sparkly, ready-to-go bean crates. We loaded these into the van, then made sure disposable gloves and all cloths were safely binned before leaving the site. Michael (Chief Officer and GoodGym friend) was very pleased to have our help to complete this lengthy and overdue task. With 4,816 Colchester people benefiting from food parcels during Jan-April 2020, the items will soon form part of a sustenance parcel, to be collected or delivered to a needy household. Thank you all, for your hard work and good spirit. Especially to members who re-arranged their schedules or took TOIL in order to help. It's BEAN marvellous seeing you all!