Welcome back and thank you to the team who turned out for our first session of 2025. And what a great one to start with - sorting donations for Care4Calais at their East London storage facility.

We were met by one of their long term volunteers, Andy, who explained what needed to be done - essentially weed out any donations not worth keeping, and then sort the clothes into piles of similar items (childrens, mens, womens etc) - and that we could approach it in any way we liked... This brought back memories of similar "sorting" activities from our lockdown-era sessions for Crisis at Christmas and we were only to happy to put our experience into practice. We made a good dent into the big donations pile, leaving behind what we hope is a more usefully organised pile that can be distributed on to people seeking asylum across East London.

We'll be back there again in a couple of weeks (and potentially beyond if they still need our help...) - as the pictures show, it's dark, so please remember head torches if you've got them! We've also got some other great tasks lined up for January - Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground next week (soon to be listed) but also a long awaited return to the Up Garden on Saturday to do some painting - sign up here.

GoodGym joined other local volunteers to help Care4Calais sort through a massive pile of clothing donations destined for refugees who are in need of a few new stiches.

The enthusiastic team gathered in a disused gym, where a mountain of donations were piled up in one room. One by one we took them through to a large studio where we sorted through the contents, separating the desirable clothes into men's, women's, children's and discarding items nobody would want. Swimming goggles and a few fancy dress head-pieces provided some laughter.

There was plenty of chatter throughout, and we stopped for a tea break, with biscuits and ORANGE MATCHMAKERS (is it the 70's??), provided by the lovely Julita who was in charge of the whole operation.