Use-by dates. Not always applied at home, provided something passes the sniff test or hasn’t gone green, but an important factor at Kingsgate Student Pantry.

Much of this fun task involved a brilliant turn out of GoodGym members going through the various items donated to the student food bank.

Ken, Marcos, Rachel, Jana, Jacqui and Ana all got stuck in straining their eyes on packets to make sure everything was safe to consume. Dave used some elbow grease to clean the freezer while Claire and Julie did the same in the kitchen.

Luke and Tom, meanwhile, very nearly consigned 50kg of lentils to the dustbin when nearly mistaking the date they were packed for the use-by. Mistake amended, they were reassigned to smaller packets, with the bag sealer getting a thorough outing.

A fun task and a warm welcome from the Kingsgate team before we reconvened at the Albion

A last-minute change of plan from our planned task, including a few late phone-calls to redirect wayward members, and we were back in Surbiton for one of our regular visits to help out at the Growbaby shop.

Rachel quickly assigned tasks around the shop. Hazel, Claire, Tom and our new recruit Marcos got to work downstairs, reassigning bags of new clothes and shoes into the appropriate crates, hanging up snow suits and occasionally venturing into the world’s most terrifying storeroom.

Upstairs, Jana repositioned wellies for a new display and Marie-Noelle and Dave tidied the rest of the shop floor. On a damp autumnal evening, we were all relieved to have a task inside. Growbaby, a valuable local resource, is always appreciative of the extra help.

Seven of us met at the Quaker Centre for our group run to Kingsgate Student Pantry. All the students have finished for the year and were heading home so the foodbank needed to be packed up for the summer.

Sarah greeted us when we arrived and we were soon put to work. Emma, Ed and Claire wiped down the fridges in the sun room, Hazel and Ben wiped the fridges by the stairs and Dave and Luke wiped down the buckets and containers. We powered through the tasks so Sarah brought over a big box of herbs and spices and we decanted the big bags into smaller plastic packets for individual use.

Soon we were all done and it was time to run home. Great session everyone! We'll be back in October to help organise the food bank when the students are back. Hope to see you there.

It was back to Kingsgate Church on Tuesday evening, where our host Sarah had some quite different tasks for us at this valuable food bank facility for local students.

Julie and Sabir were quick to work, sorting out noodles and weighing out bags of 'spicy seed mix', an alliterative combination that Jade, Luke, Rachel and Dave will not forget as they wrote out ingredient labels for the new packets.

Some super scripting solidly served - sterling stuff, squad!

As Tom and Claire checked over some new stock and moved it into crates upstairs, Jade smashed our cardboard boxes into smithereens and Luke finished wiping the fridges.

There’s always a nice welcome after climbing the infinite stairs in the church - we even got name tags and the offer of some spare pots of plant-based non-alcoholic brandy cream - and we’ll be back for another visit soon once the students disappear for the summer.

It felt like winter rather than the start of spring as a few hardy souls braved the rain to help out at one of our semi-regular tasks at Kingsgate Church’s student foodbank.

Sarah had a few things on the agenda for us and Emma, Emily and Jade were quickly away with cleaning fridges and storage areas on one of the church’s many levels.

Dave and Tom spent the session assembling a new set of shelves, completion of which they were definitely more impressed by than others, while Beth and Rachel organised and checked best-before dates of new products that had been donated.

Everyone chipped in for the final effort of lifting new trays of donations into position, including perhaps the largest collection of tinned peas in existence anywhere in the world!

On a pretty miserable evening, our presence was very much appreciated in what turned out to be a good fun task.

It was our pleasure to drop in on our group run this week to help the new student foodbank at Kingsgate Church, which is sadly needed to tackle student food poverty in Kingston.

A running and walking group made their way there to help volunteers Sarah and Alison tidy up and help with a stocktake, getting the shelves ready for more donations arriving this week. We discovered quite a few Goodgymers (Julie, Dave and Jade!) had experience of auditing and felt quite at home with a spreadsheet - bit of a change from our usual manual handling tasks!

It was great to welcome Luke to the group, who joined Claire, Jas, Jade, Rachel and Petra sorting out the shelves. Ellie and Emma armed themselves with cloths and cleaning products to wipe down the fridges and freezers.

Even though it has only been open a couple of months the weekly food pantry has been overwhelmingly popular, providing students with food, personal hygiene and cleaning items as well as access to optional pastoral support and signposting to additional services available.

We have said we’ll come back when they need some extra hands to do another blitz. Luckily not as cold this week as we ran back along the river to the Quaker Centre and did our cool-down!