It's our Birthday!

To celebrate GoodGym Oxford being 6 years old a bevy of GoodGymers got together at County Hall. Of course we had to include a Good Deed in our birthday celebrations (no Wednesday is complete without one), so we packaged up 3 boxes of old trainers to send to JogOn for repurposing and recycling. These had been collected up from friends, family and colleagues over the previous few weeks, saving them from going to landfill.

With 26 GoodGymers in attendance that task was complete in record time, leaving us the rest of the evening to chat over drinks and nibbles, reminiscing about the past 6 years and speculating about what the future might bring.

Our 6 year Good Deed count is 8038. Happy Birthday to Us!

The task: finishing painting the walls at Oxsrad.
The complication: all the blue paint had dried up, and the white paint had been speckled with blue, making it a delightful pale sky blue.
The next step: stand around eating birthday cake for Vicky's birthday while we see if there's a solution.
The solution: give up on the idea of painting, layer up, and go and do a litter pick instead.

Thank you everyone for being adaptable!

On Wednesday we rounded off a January full of Good Deeds with a litter pick in Headington. In an exciting development we were joined by a journalist from ITV, who was filming a piece on GoodGym which will show on the 6pm news in a few weeks' time. So, alongside our expert litter picking, this week we got to polish our public speaking/acting skills. Cue some 'fake' running (there was real running too!), performative litter picking, and expert handling of hecklers while being interviewed by Ben.

Filming complete, we picked up the pace on our litter picking and made sure we'd done a thorough clean up of Gipsy Lane before we had to call time on the session.

Welcome to GoodGym Stephen!

We know the redecorating task pretty well at OXSRAD now, with several sessions under our belts this autumn. Between us, centre staff, and a few other volunteers, we've managed to get at least 1 coat of paint on nearly every wall, and it's already looking much smarter around the place. This week we had less blue to do, and mostly focused on white paint. Christmas decorations were up, so we also had to make sure not to splatter the tinsel - although maybe the odd splash of white paint on the Christmas tree would serve as a snow sprinkle?! With tea and cake at the end (thank you Alice), this was a great task for a cold and icy evening.

Maybe we'll be back to finish up in 2025, who can tell?!

During Christmas 2023, inspired by two CAMHS volunteer elves, Christmas for CAHMS ran a paper chain making project. It went down so well in CAMHS units (CAMHS stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) that they’re going to do it again in 2024, and this time we got involved!

The paper chains are a team effort - they will be started by members of the public (like us), and then the young people will connect them together when they arrive in the CAMHS units. Each paper chain will have a cheesy cracker joke written on the inside to add an extra bit of fun during assembly.

We all gathered at City Hall and set up in the reception area. Drinks (some more fortifying than others.......) were provided by Markand we set to work.

After an hour of trimming, writing and chatting we managed to produce 138 slips and a packet of blank ones for other elves to use.

A lovely wholesome, and WARM, task!