Well done everybody for this week’s task helping care4calais organising their donations.

Four of us met at the start point, with two joining us at the task.

Great fashion find this week was a pair of half leopard print jeans. Why would anyone give them up?! (Kitten/pirate tshirt is still there in case anyone’s wondering).

Two volunteer police officers amongst us making sure we felt super safe, with some discussion of getting the tasers they’re now entitled to.

Favourite national days was the thought provoking random weekly question this week, prompted some discussion of whether pancake day counts, world book day was a contender and no trousers on the tube got honourable mention. It was actually national homemade soup day on Tuesday… so.. y’know….wow.

Hackney adventure playground next Tue evening, so if you’re up for some adventure…

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.