Tier 4 meant that our Turkey Trots couldn't be a communal affair, so we all ran our miles separately instead.

Good to get out in the fresh air!

Remember, remember, OMA in November
Baby powder, treacle and stock

As we head into lockdown through November we have teamed up with Oxford Mutual Aid. We have agreed that GoodGym Oxford will pack all their Wednesday evening parcels of provisions and deliver all of them within walking distance of the hall.

But first things, first; we had a whole host of GoodGym milestones to celebrate this week! We celebrated Ben's 100th Good Deed, Annabel's 50th and Chris's 10th with beautiful brownies and fabulous flapjacks provided by Bethan. Yummy. Thanks for providing us with an excuse for some cakey joy you three!

Lockdown eve saw the streets of Oxford busy with people grabbing their last chance to socialise, but when you're a GoodGym member Wednesday night socialising takes a different format from the usual options, and for us there's nothing better than a good deed and a thorough chin wag.

Tonight we had 12 food parcels, 9 baby provision parcels, and 2 emergency family-sized parcels to pack and distribute.

Pairing up, as last week, but rotating partners so that everyone chatted to someone new, it was on with the deliveries...almost double the number as last week. You fabulous lot turned out in force, giving us plenty of pairs of hands to get everything to the doors of people in need. Nappies, reheatable meals, bags of baby clothes, tinned soup, fresh fruit and veg...it was all flying out of the OMA hall in Oxford tonight.

We were definitely putting the 'Gym' into GoodGym, with heavy bags full of tins and fresh veg getting our arm muscles working, and distances up to 2 miles to walk to delivery addresses. At least one of us ran the return journey: Witness the Fitness!

Oxford Mutual Aid are extremely appreciative of your efforts:
"So so so so so happy you’re all on board."

"Honestly so so so glad to have joined up."

"You guys are incredible."

The items some of you brought to donate were very much appreciated.

Thank you to Holly for the excellent report title pun!

Warm welcome to our new attendees Samantha and Guillem. Lovely to have you with us!

We'll be back with Oxford Mutual Aid again next Wednesday. I hope you go into lockdown with a warm glow from doing something lovely for others.

Oxford Mutual Aid have been doing awesome work addressing food poverty in Oxford.

They provide free reheatable meals, emergency food parcels, and regular food deliveries, amongst other things. Although there may be points to make about the tragedy of this being necessary, we are very fortunate to have them here to support those in need in our city.

We made contact with Oxford Mutual Aid to offer our help only a couple of weeks ago and they have embraced our team with enthusiasm and appreciation. Having GoodGym help pack parcels and making regular food deliveries on their behalf enables them to get people off their waiting list and into the system receiving regular free food parcels. It also takes the pressure off their volunteer delivery drivers so they can focus on the larger parcels and addresses further afield.

We received our list of deliveries on Tuesday night, with an emergency addition on Wednesday, and divvied them up between our team. Most set off in pairs, with the exception of Team Microwave, who with food AND a microwave to deliver were allowed an extra pair on their delivery route. Whilst not quite what they may have been expecting to deliver tonight, their extra effort to get the microwave to the address means that person can now have hot food, whereas they previously had no cooking facilities.

A few of our GoodGym crew remained behind at Richard Benson Hall to make up further parcels and get the shelves restocked.

I hope you all enjoyed your walk and chat and that you got to know someone new tonight :-) I was very impressed by the snazzy masks you all wore!

Whilst it isn't our normal way to return to the same task week-in-week-out, this is a vital task and has never been more needed than it is now, so we are going to make this a regular Wednesday evening task. I'm certain we will be a highly-efficient food delivery machine! Options to help other projects will be available on other days, so there will still be plenty of variety to choose from.

A warm welcome to Alexandra and Rebecca who joined us for the first time tonight.