Saturday 7th March 2020
Find out about GoodGym TaskForce
Report written by Sam Lefevre (he/him)
It's that time of the month, when City Harvest needs our help! 11 GoodGym Heroes came to the rescue! There were two main tasks to focus on; one group lead by Paul went outside in their City Harvest high vis to sort and organise the crates and trays whilst the second group lead by Sam stayed inside to sort out the food delivered by Amazon Park Royal earlier in the day.
With hardly any space and with "too many cooks in the kitchen" as the saying goes, Sam, Alexandra, Annabel (known as the bread lady for the day), Chris, Emily and Jenny (x2) sorted through the donated food, check dates, and organised them in categories (fruit, veg, ready meals, red meat, white meat, fish, diary etc.). Any food with today's or tomorrow's date needed to go out to the local charities. There was an initial confusion of how the food needed to be sorted... Yet, once we all got going, there seem to be a system and the sorting and organising was finished within an hour!
Upon waiting for a Costco delivery (which never came), Jenny (x2), Emily and Sam took the very brave task of finding meat and ready meals for a local food bank in the blast freezer, which was at a very cold minus 19 degrees! It was like playing a giant version of tetris - where we shifted crates of frozen sauces, cheeses and other random frozen foods to find and get the wanted goods... With our hands slowly getting cold and numb. Of course, we took it in turns to ensure none of us froze to death! Yet, you won't see us rushing off to Siberia or Alaska in the winter anytime soon!
Our final task for the day (which Annabel and Jenny kindly stayed beyond 14:00 for, thanks again), was to load up one of the vans with all the food with today's or tomorrow's date that needed to go out. However, upon loading 3/4 of the van, the driver came by to let us know the front left tire was flat... We left it at that.
There's always a monthly community mission with City Harvest! If you enjoyed yourself today or enjoyed reading this report and like the sound of this task, join us in April! Check out it out in the "Community Missions" and sign up!
City Harvest helps put surplus food to good use in a sustainable way, by distributing to organisations that feed the hungry.
See moreEaling
Help run drop-in service on a Friday where homeless can get free clothes and wellbeing services