Care4Calais had a big job for GoodGym this afternoon. To prepare around 130 packs of clothing for refugees in one hotel. Some of the residents had been given clothes previously and today, the second big delivery would complete the task.

Boxes of clothes were piled up waiting for the team, who welcomed back Mohamed for his first GoodGym Ealing task since moving back west 👋. The ask was fairly straight forward, to make standard clothing packs in a single size at a time, on a larger scale than normal. Everything was set up like a production line to make the system quick and easy:

1. Open a bag 🛍️
2. Place socks inside 🧦
3. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
4. Add men's underwear 🩲
5. Add a hoodie 🧥
6. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
7. Add jogging bottoms 👖
8. Add 2 t-shirts 👕👕
9. Done ✅

With much of the clothing being black or navy, the team needed ways to make sure the right clothes ended up in the right bags.

"Are these hoodies or joggers?" - GoodGymer
"Which half naked man is on the pack?"
"The hoodies have topless men on them too, which doesn't make sense" - Tamzin, task owner

The "naked man process" worked up until the team realised that some packs had 2 hoodies and no trousers in them. Cue a rapid search through 40ish packs to identify which ones needed fixing.

Despite the hoodie issues early on, an improved system meant that the job of creating the packs finished early, with a range of small, medium, large and XL bags tightly packed into boxes.

After the rapid and fairly repetitive production line, came the slow, creative piece. Fitting all of those boxes into 2 family cars needed thought, inventiveness and some force. With both cars full to bursting and ready to be delivered to Care4Calais' beneficiaries, it was time to wrap up and wander home in the late afternoon sun.

Today's visit to Care4Calais provided a lot of variety, with plenty of different jobs to work through. There was variety in the location too, almost, as the GoodGymers were supposed to meet at a storage unit, then a last minute change had them unexpectedly climbing back up the hill to the Care4Calais HQ.

Once in the right place, Kash and Sevan started outside (in the shade, thankfully), on a fold out table adding socks to boxes and boxes full of pre-made clothing packs. They came out of the car, were socked up, then went straight back in. Getting them back in involved a complicated game of Tetris for one person. 😅

Moving to the cool of indoors, there were a handful of new requests to fulfil, with many of them needing shoes. Shoes are constantly moving around Care4Calais' on-site storage, so task owner Tamzin often needs to explain the new system. This time, boxes were perched on top of other boxes in a corner and there were a lot of used running shoes. Kash was on the hunt for some size 11s and could only find some New Balance with all sizing labels rubbed clean. Hopefully they're the right size for the recipient. 🤞

Next was a quick session of making extra large men's standard clothing packs, then onto sorting and sizing an big pile of men's donations. The same pile that had been left to one side last week as they focused on women's stock. Today, Sevan became the sizing model, as everyone tried to work out whether unlabelled clothes were small, medium or large.

Time flew by and Tamzin was happy to have all of the jobs on her list crossed off. For the GoodGymers that was rewarding too and it was great to spend 2 hours at an indoor task, away from the heat of the afternoon sun! 👌🌞

On the hottest day in the country so far this year, 4 GoodGymers arrived at one of their regular Care4Calais sessions not knowing what to expect. Three of them had run 9km from their previous task in Southall and were hot, hot, hot! 🥵

Task owner Tamzin welcomed the group with cold drinks and pistachio ice cream, which made everyone perk up and got them ready for the task ahead. Other volunteers had been earlier in the day to prepare clothing packs for refugees, so sorting new donations was the main task for the GoodGymers.

Tamzin brought in one set of donations at a time, which seemed to be never ending. Carrier bags, boxes and a suitcase all made appearances with the priority being separating out the women's, men's and children's clothes, then sizing and storing all of the female attire. Some of the sizing was more hands on (or body on), especially when the stated sized looked totally wrong. Surprisingly, there was a lot of summer clothing to work through at the start of the season. On the other hand, a few jokers thought that donating winter scarves and gloves in the current heat wave would be helpful 😒.

"Those trousers are more commando" - Steph
"You mean camo?" - Sevan
"😳" - Steph

Some more novelty items were found including a yellow "Me call shenanigans" t-shirt that GoodGymers had sorted and packed before (old photo added to report) and had been returned by one of Care4Calais' clients. Maybe it wasn't for them. Kash also found a mysterious object.

"Is this a skirt? Oh. No, it has opening only on one side. Is it a bag?" - Kash
"It's a pillowcase" - Sevan
"I've got one of those too" - Steph
"Well at least there's 2 of them" - Sevan

Stacks and stacks of the women's clothes were sized and neatly stacked to go into stock and those that didn't make the grade were set aside to be donated to other charities. That never ending supply of bags, well, ended thanks to some great teamwork 🤜🤛. The replenished stock room was now ready for the next set of volunteers to prepare clothing packs when new request come in.

Donations that come in to Care4Calais are mysterious. GoodGymers don't often know who has donated sacks of clothing. Sometimes members of the public, sometimes a church or mosque. Today, task owner Tamzin had a surprise for the team. Two crates full of shoes that had been donated from the set of a TV series called Heads of State.

Rainu and Sevan spent most of the session untangling and pairing shoes, then grouping them by size. Once they'd worked out the UK to EU size mapping, they made good progress through the shoes and sandals. The second crate included 3 zipped bags and when they were opened, they were filled with slippers and Ugg-style boots. Great for the winter, not as useful in summer, so they were put to one side. Upstairs, Kash had paired up with Tamzin to prepare standard clothing packs for women in different sizes.

Rainu had a great time, saying:

Just so rewarding...back breaking ha ha. Well worth it. Luved it. Great team work..felt so part of team thank you Tamzin and GoodGym guys

At the end of the session, everyone came together to prepare requests that had come in, with trousers, tops and newly restocked shoes being bagged up for beneficiaries. New clothes, shoes and packs were organised in the stock room, before everyone wrapped up for the day.

After a 1st session in the morning and a quick lunch before running again to the 2nd mission of the day, the 3 Goodgymers with supernatural forces : Kash,Sevan and Steph Ducat arrived at their destination to meet another Emma. Tamzin welcomed the crew and Emma was shown the ropes at Care4Calais. Tamzin mentioned that the numbers have decreased as the council was using other partners too alongside Care4Calais. Kash, Sevan and Emma prepared packs with the usual socks, undies, tshirts, hoodies, trousers but today had a twist...put a silly jumper in the pack. Steph Ducat was with Tamzin and prepared 7 packs that were requested to be delivered to those who needed clothes. As some bags were returned, they then had to separate the clothes and put them back in the correct boxes by gender and sizes. Steph Ducat had a lot of small sizes ...children sizes up to new borns, but also found some very silly tops and socks. We unraveled a series of extraordinary mysteries with the clothes donations like flashy tops, cycling and running gear and alot of tops people went or events they participated in. What tops would the Goodgymers wear?

In the run up to Eid, Care 4 Calais had received a lot of requests for abayas and had been given a huge number of them as donations by a mosque. Today's task for GoodGym Ealing was to bag up the requests, ready to be delivered in the evening.

Michelle returned for her second task with Care 4 Calais in a week and was generous enough to bring some clothes donations, while Eliz was helping there for the first time and had managed to change into some clothes that weren't caked in clay after the morning task at Grove Farm.

At the start of the session, Michelle and Sevan learned that abayas were sized by height, generally from 50 to 60, which matched the wearer. Helpfully, the boxes were laid out sorted by size and had been filtered by a Muslim woman who knew what she was doing. Each pack was to contain 3 abayas, with at least one being black and 3 headscarves, with 1 black, 1 patterned and 1 new to keep things fair for the recipients. The team started with the shortest requests, the size 50s, and worked upwards in height. Everyone found that the work was quite relaxing as every request was similar, so they got into a good rhythm.

The first abayas were quite conservative. Then they found some more modern prints and soon after Eliz raised a concern. Was an abaya with a floral print actually a nightie? It might be. Tamzin took a look and it was, so Eliz was rightie. So much for the clothes being pre-filtered. Other non-conforming "abayas" were found, which were pyjamas, jumpsuits or summer dresses 👗. They all went into a rejects box to be used for other purposes as they were still useful donations.

Time was tight and the packs needed to be completed by 5pm, so everyone stayed a bit longer, working with Tamzin and a new Care 4 Calais volunteer to finish the last requests. As the GoodGymers wrapped up, the completed packs were piled high all around the first floor, ready for the driver who'd be arriving soon. Great work team! 🙌🎉👏