Kingston Goodgym are SOUPer Heroes! Ready to rule Kingston with an iron (or tin) feast!

The Kingston Goodgym community came together (at a distance of at least 2m) to help those in need over the last two weeks. The Kingston Food Bank has been worrying about running short on food due to the current rate of usage with more people in a tough spot and requiring extra support at this time. Many members of Goodgym Kingston were involved in putting posters through letter boxes, posting messages on street whatsapp groups, putting boxes for collections outside their homes and blocks of flats as well as encouraging friends, family members and neighbours to donate non-perishable food items.

There are still requests for tinned meat and meat meals, tinned vegetables, instant mash, fruit squash, steam puddings, noodles, custard, coffee, custard (it’s that good – they asked twice!), tinned spaghetti, long life milk and pasta sauce.

It was such a great idea that Martel had and we are also grateful to Laura for pudding a poster together for us so quickly too!

There were such generous donations of various tinned veggies (including tinned potatoes and yams) that I don’t know where to starch! I yam so impressed with our neighbours’ generosity! I know that these donations will be an instant mash hit with those that will be receiving them! Residents did a brilliant job and managed to sauce every item on the list many times over!

This might be a bit corny but it was an a-maize-ing haul! There were legen-dairy food gatherings going on. Within just a few days there were updates coming in of boxes filling up! We CAN make a difference! We are get-tin good at this! All these brilliant donations began to appear with endless tinned veggies! Who knew what would crop up next! We dis-custard the need for puddings. But give peas a chance! Did I just have deja-brew or is that another generous instant coffee donation in the box? We’d bean gathering so many donations that some Goodgymers’ corridors were filling up! Collection day needed to be moved up to clear some space and we were excited to make our first delivery to the Food Bank….if we could track them down! With so many additional food bank locations needed to be running to reach all residents in need across the borough, it was hard to track down the man in charge to hand over the goods! We had filled the car until there wasn’t mushroom for more! We thought we couldn’t fit any more in but then managed to squash a few more bottles of juice on the floor. We managed to find the most helpful drop off point for the donations as volunteers were due to be sorting food into boxes to be delivered to residents from there.

And it was time to say pasta la vista’!

But wait! It’s not over lentil it’s over! This just in: The neighbours have asked when the box is going back out again! Some have said there’s still more to come and more asking when the next collection will be made. Martel has said that because of such an overwhelmingly positive response the council would like to see if it could make it happen across the borough! Each road will have a champion to promote the donations for the food bank and organise the collection.

We’ve learned that we can always bank on a good neighbour! It’s bean a pleasure doing what we can to help and we’re looking forward to doing more! It’s so encouraging to see so many so soup-er keen to help!