Tonight, 6 GoodGymer's helped at Sparkhill Foodbank on the clothes bank side of operations to assist Narthex, a charity which does great and much needed work at resourcing those in need.

It was great to have Ruby along and she passed the first hurdle by finding the foodbank with ease.

We were in a different room to normal and in an upstairs area tasked with clearing an area, which had been used as a mixed storage area, to create a dedicated area for homeware, bedding and other items such as children's toys. Due to her great organisational skills and love of interior design Amy was put in charge to manage this area.

Whilst Amy was sorting out how she wanted the area organised, the rest of us transported bags and boxes filled with items such as clothes downstairs, and brought other relevant items back upstairs. This was a good fitness session as we went up and down many times. Sofeen was in his element doing this, whilst Ruby showed me what common sense looked like when loading a cage of items instead of carrying them individually.

After we transported all the items to their respective rooms, we helped with labeling and sorting boxes of books and toys into different age ranges, varying from baby up to teenagers.

It was a great session and we were all able to release our inner youth by seeing books and other games from our childhoods. In particular, Tom liked the Spider-Man toys, hence this week's pun, and Amy managed to find all sorts of books, some more appropriate than others...

We all had a good time and look forward to the next session on 23rd January.

A very busy but enjoyable shift at the foodbank, with 10 of us volunteering in total. I spent time checking the use by dates in premade parcels, packing new parcels up and rotating stock. We distributed 34 food packages in total and prepared many more for future clients.

The staff and other volunteers were very welcoming and happily showed me the ropes. I quickly picked up the task, which was mainly packing food parcels, with a bit of stock rotation. This shift would usually be client facing but was all stock room based due to the pandemic. It was a very rewarding day and I would love to do it again!