Six good gymers met at Slung Low (aka Holbeck WMC) for a meet and greet from Alan. The theatre company is currently distributing up to 300 food parcels daily to local residents and were welcoming volunteers to pack bags with fresh and dry groceries. So we climbed into an articulated lorry to bag up supplied donated by organisations on an industrial scale. A production line was formed and bags filled at a cracking pace. Alan presented us with jars of homemade jam as a reward!

Peckham Town FC came calling after a couple (or more than a couple) of vandals vandalized their club grounds. The evidence can be found here. GoodGym Southwark put up the community mission over a week ago and luckily, we had 13 runners signed up willing to help the cause.

Saturday morning arrived and so did the sunny weather, Duncan (the Club Development Coordinator) arrived well before everyone as Peckham Town FC had the privilege of getting a film crew in by the FA to film a segment on grassroot football and volunteering. Yes, we got our GoodGym red and black shirts in the documentary too! And no, it won't be on Netflix...but, if you manage to do a FA badge/training course, you may see us there.

Firstly, before I start talking about the tasks we did, I have to give a warm welcome to Ian, who came for his first ever GoodGym mission! Welcome and hopefully, this will be the start of many more GoodGym Good Deeds for you!

Duncan had set out a few tasks for the morning, but in GoodGym fashion we claimed the gardening and litter picking tasks. However, a few GoodGymers (namely, Bea, Emma, Jack and Vic) took on painting the clubhouse from the outside and the corridors inside.

The rest of us ventured across the road to Pyners Training Grounds where the Under 14s were training, yet we had a massive clean up job. Unfortunately, some youths had a bit too much time on their hands and had a drinking session, which most of the rubbish ended up in ruins (broken glass) on the ground near the changing rooms and on the pitch. Yet, we were up for the task and with the tools (broom/brush, shoves, bin bags and a wheel barrow), we cracked on. An hour and a half later, we cleared up the area near the changing rooms and dug out. Yet, there's still a few bits and bobs in terms of litter on the pitch that might require a second date, if Peckham Town FC would like to have us over again.

Some GoodGymers stayed after to enjoy a free lunch (BBQ), which I found out there was some spare sausages for those who missed out! Shame!

Thanks to Paulin for taking the photos as my phone was out of action. Yet, I would like to thank all the GoodGym volunteers/runners who came out early this Saturday morning and hopefully, everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I did:

Bea Em Emily Emma Frances Ian Jack Nicky Samantha Steven Paulin Vic

Massive thank you! :)

It’s that time of year again where we get the gang together to help our friends over at Kings Church to distribute their preordered Christmas Trees.

Surprisingly mild for December 7th we all met up and were raring to go, including Ian who chose this community mission as his very first goodgym good deed. Welcome to the family, we hope to see more of you in the future.

As always with the trees all lined up in size order, the Christmas songs playing and the chocolates on the go the customers started slowly showing up to collect their trees and get on home to commence the decorating. It’s apparent that which tree to get is a very important decision.

Alongside the list of names of people collecting were little notes such as a a think tree or a small tree but the one that made us all laugh was the one that asked for sturdy branches prompting Emma to ask the gentleman it was because he had massive baubles.

It was a morning filled with laughter, Christmas spirit and the smell of pine needles. We even had a little visitor who always gets all the attention, the lovely Molly Dog.

This is one of my favourite community missions and I look forward to doing it again next year.