GoodGym Ealing's latest visit to Care 4 Calais had them working through a familiar set of tasks, which they've been building experience in over the past few months. By the end of the task:

• 🛍️ A stack of clothing bags were created, ready for delivery to Care 4 Calais' beneficiaries;
• 👞👚 -> 📦 Shoes and women's clothes donations had been sorted and stored;
• 👟👟 2 identical right shoes were found. Only the task owner's sharp eyes realised that it was a wrong pair of shoes

Earlier, the team had helped bring new, very cold, donations inside to sort through. Once they (the clothes) defrosted, Kash, Paul and Mohamed got to work, first sizing the shoes that had been received, then separating the clothes into men's, women's and children's piles. The majority of the new clothes were for women which Mohamed and Kash stayed to do the next round of sorting on. T-shirts, legs and warm top categories were broken down by sizes from XS to XL. There were donations of Indian clothes as well as some from a mosque, so Kash learned from Mohamed how to identify abayas from non-abayas.

In the packing area, Paul and Sevan had created new standard packs for small and large men. No new packs for medium men today as clothes stocks in their size were low. The pair then moved on to fulfilling specific requests, with Sevan hunting in the stock rooms for children's school clothes for the first time. The completed bundles of clothes kept increasing and Paul neatly organised them by destination.

Any unsorted donations were left for the next volunteers to pick up and clothes that wouldn't be needed for a few months were packed into suitcases to go into storage. Kash was sent away with the suitcases. She may or may not make it out of storage for the next group run to Walpole Park on Tuesday.

Care 4 Calais had received another load of donations which task owner, Tamzin, had asked for help to sort through. Mohamed, Kash, Steph and Sevan braved the rain and wind to dive into the giant bags and see what was what.

Mohamed, Kash and Steph started by sorting the adult clothes donations by gender and then by size, creating neat piles for XS people through to XL people. Some of the sizes had to be eyeballed as labels were missing or the clothes had come from countries with totally different sizing systems, leaving the GoodGymers confused. As usual, some of the donations weren't suitable styles for those who'll receive them, so they were separated out to be passed onto other charities.

Elsewhere, Sevan was working alongside Tamzin to prepare clothing packs that would be delivered tomorrow, adding shoes, jackets or other items to the standard sets. Unlike last time, there were no unusual requests, only awkward sizes where stock was low. There turned out to be some duplicate clothing packs though, which luckily were caught by the pair before being dispatched.

By the end of the task, everyone was reunited sorting clothes. Once the adult donations were completed, there was the fun task of working with children's clothes. No one present had children, so there was a lot of guesswork involved to work out which age bracket each jacket, t-shirt or sweater would fit in. They were told by Tamzin not to worry too much as it would work itself out.

By the time the team left, the sorted donations were ready for the next volunteer group to prepare new clothing packs with and the completed clothing packs were ready to be delivered. A good achievement on the first day of the year.

Today was GoodGym Ealing's second visit to Care 4 Calais and we were again preparing clothing packages for refugees in the Heathrow area. It was Claire and Mohamed's first visit, so after a quick intro to the charity, the group were shown the storage system and the requested clothes for upcoming beneficiaries.

Each request was different with many having specific needs, so additions to the standard clothing packs had to be sourced and shortages in certain sizes had to be worked around. One person wanted size 15 shoes and another had "piano" on their list. Sevan had to double check that it was an actual piano being requested and not a code word for something else.

The task owner, Tamzin, knew more about the recipients, so stepped in when needed to add alternative clothes depending on need or to share that older people would want extra warm layers to help them through the winter. There were fewer parcels to prepare for women and children, so the GoodGymers didn't get to search through the bag of cute, children's hats too often. That was a treat saved for the group photo.

The team quickly burned through the pre-prepared clothing packs and had to create some more to keep up with demand. With all of the bags completed, the last job was to organise them by destination to make the task of the next set of volunteers easier when it comes to delivering them.

Four GoodGymers arrived at a new task location this afternoon to sort donations and prepare clothes packs for refugees and asylum seekers in the local area. Care4Calais work to provide suitable clothing for those who arrive in the country without it and had asked for help to work through the bags they'd received.

Task owner Tamzin gave Kash, Steph, Divy and Sevan an intro to the charity, then guided them to different rooms, each of them piled high with boxes and clothes. Everything had it's place, but they had to know the system to know where that place was. Learning that took time. More-than-1-session sort of time.

There were 2 main tasks to get started with. Divy and Steph were asked to make up clothing packs for male clients. Meanwhile, Kash and Sevan would be sorting and sizing women's clothing donations.

Team Man's clothing packs were made up for a specific client to their size. Each one included underwear, a pair of trousers, t-shirts and a hoodie, which should have been straightforward. Actually, Divy spent a good chunk of the task trying to locate specific items that had gone walkabout so that the duo could keep building.

One floor up, Team Woman were separating donations by size and type, with a pile each for bottoms, tops and warm outer clothing. Any men's or children's clothes that they found were separated out, along with anything impractical. Part way through, Sevan was reassigned to organising space in the stock rooms and then onto sorting children's jackets

By the end of the task, some creative sourcing allowed Divy and Steph to create all of the mens' packs on the list. Kash had managed to process the women's clothes and Sevan had a neatly organised rack of storage bags containing children's clothes ordered by age. Everything was prepared for the next group of volunteers to pick up and run with.