Lucy, Bozena, Matt and Florence spent Saturday morning helping pack up bags and boxes of Christmas gifts for deprived young people in the Nottingham area. A huge well done for your efforts at this task supporting an amazing charity, Bags of Blessings.

About Bags of Blessings

Carrying Joy, Bringing Hope

We are a charity, local to Nottingham, which distributes donated gifts to deprived young people in the Nottingham area. We put collection boxes in local schools, churches, and businesses, with the request for small, pocket money toys, stationery, books, or items of confectionery. We then sort the donations into age groups, gift wrap each item and put 4 or 5 gifts into a red cotton bag to be distributed to young people aged 0-16 via food banks, homeless and refugee charities or organisations which support disadvantaged children.

We believe that every child deserves to experience the magic of Christmas!

It was back to the food bank in The Meadows for eight Goodgymers last night. Mark from the food bank soon had us organised and so we set to work. Hannah, Bozena and Aj set to organising stock. Meanwhile some generous donations meant a number of pallets where stacked higher than Peter so Matt (six at a time!), Scott, Tom and Kevin got stuck in to moving tuna, mandarin segments and rice puddings by the dozen upstairs. Some would say this was good Hyrox training if anyone had somehow got themselves roped in to one (not looking at Tom in particular!) but was definitely a good workout for everyone there!

It was a bumper turn out at this week’s task as 11 Nottingham GoodGymers headed to the Meadows Foodbank and Pantry. Mark greeted us on arrival and, once he found his to-do list, he set us to work on a variety of tasks.

Dayna and Elspeth took on the task of sorting and tidying the clothes in the foodbank. Matt, Bozena, Rafe, Nigel, Rosemarie and Vytautas did a huge clean of the floors, shelves and fridges. Meanwhile Peter, Tom and Rachel headed upstairs to tackle a flat pack Ikea table and a clothes rail.

As some of these jobs proved quicker than others, a few of the group then turned their hand to dating some of the food, and photographing and cataloging some toys and baby items which are going to form part of the foodbank’s Christmas campaign (see information poster in photos). Finally, as if we hadn’t ticked off enough different activities this evening, Nigel took on the important job of folding bits of paper for the foodbank’s raffle which was due to be drawn in the coming days.

We welcomed Rafe to his first GoodGym session, and also Elspeth who has recently moved to Nottingham from Leeds where she used to do GoodGym.

Also congrats to Dayna who has now done 10 tasks, and a big well done to Bozena who did the Robin Hood Half Marathon at the weekend!

Well done to Bozena who went along to help tidy up after the Nottingham Green Festival 2025. Despite some last-minute changes to the event and extreme weather conditions, it looks like a great time was had by all who attended. Check out the Green festival Facebook page for more about this year's festival and up-coming events.