Due to provisions for Covid19, the Crisis at Christmas warehouse opened in December for deliveries and to mobilise a unique volunteer effort to bring warmth, companionship and vital services to homeless friends during one of the most difficult times of the year. As the year drew to a close volunteers helped to organise donations and gift wrap hampers for those struggling.

All these excellent services are possible through teamwork and the coming together of hundreds and thousand of committed community volunteers who give up time, finance, skills and items to help bring a smile to the faces of the vulnerable and needy.

Jacqui, Michelle and I helped efforts to dismantle the Christmas warehouse. The weather was cold, wet and dreary but there were plenty smiles and lots of hard grafting to pass the time.

We do brilliant work because we care.

We can’t promise to save the planet but we do try our best to make a difference.

A lovely warm Friday evening brought together Goodgymers for one of the final sessions at the Crisis warehouse in Poplar. It was explained that the warehouse is now moving elsewhere, and we were tasked to get everything packed away.

Sharon, Kevin, Hilary and myself were in a group working with the computer equipment. This involved packing up keyboards, mice, network cables etc into trolleys, and then walking in circles wrapping the trolleys in clingfilm, which did result in giving us a head rush! The Head of IT at Crisis said it had originally taken him a month to pack up the equipment, and the GoodGym had repacked it in 4 hours, which shows the power of volunteering!

Rosa, Paula, Callum and Paul were working in another part of the warehouse helping to pack up the final bits and pieces into the cages. We didn’t quite make it to finishing everything so there is one more session you can sign up for next Friday. The final chapter!

After the session we all headed down to a lovely bar on the canal in Stratford for pizza, beer and the Euro (on two screens with a time lag which made it interesting to watch!).

A great evening was had by all!

Another warm Wednesday evening at the massive echoey warehouse saw Fiona, Jem, Stephen, PvT and myself helping out Taidgh and Chris from Crisis by getting stuck into box ordering by sequence, everyone's favourite task of pallet wrapping, loading of monitor screens and keyboards in a delicate balancing act and then using the pallet trucks to shift everything around in some form of co-ordinated fashion to enable Taidgh to demonstrate his forklifting skills moving all of this remaining IT equipment to the loading bay.

In spite of the subterranean conditions in the warehouse, it proved to be warm work, but 19 pallets later our tasks were complete - Chris was most grateful as this time last year he'd had to do all that work on his own.

Still no definitive date for Crisis to exit the building, and definitely more work for Friday's group to get done...and yet again, it was still light and warm when we exited the building.

Following on from Wednesday's unexpected return to the Crisis at Christmas warehouse, Friday evening's team comprised of a hard working bunch mainly from Newham and Tower Hamlets, but we also welcomed Chris from Southwark, venturing East for his second GoodGym outing. We continued with the task of getting all that remains in the warehouse stacked neatly on to pallets or into cages, clingfilmed up for transport into Crisis' permanent storage. It'll all come out again next year and another group of volunteers will have the (un?)enviable task of working out how everything has been thoroughly categorised and counted.

Enjoying a big turnout, we were able to get a bit more done than Taidgh from Crisis had anticipated, so having cleared bays 5 and 6, sorted out the sofas and chairs in another area, we made a beeline for the pub. There is, however, still a bit more to do! Sessions are up for Wednesday and Friday next week, so hope to see some of you there again.

An unexpected return visit to the Crisis Warehouse on a warm Wednesday evening to help Crisis project managers Anna and Taidgh with the final 20% of the "stuff" still in the warehouse that needs moving from the various far reaches of the building to the main entrance in preparation for trucks to collect later this month.

Anna guided Keri, Heinrich and I to the upstairs area above the old call centre to initially move three full cages of stationary and other items down the stairs (empty cage, move all contents down the stairs, then refill same cages at ground level...) before moving into a small office to empty that of all its contents.

Taidgh armed Becky and Simon with power drills to de-whiteboard the various rooms, and gave Grit and Simon H the furniture moving shift, putting big lockers onto pallets and then getting them wrapped in the heavy duty clingfilm...everyone's favourite (slightly manic) task.

Inevitably we all then converged on helping each other with the various shifting, wrapping, rolling, caging, lugging and palleting in the area at the back of the building - when the peace was disturbed by Anna firing up the forklift to do the real heavy lifting of the pallets.

Clearly there's still more to do (this Warehouse truly is the gift that keeps on giving...), so the team coming on Friday will have their hands full, but as always the Crisis team were grateful for everyone's help...and it was still light and warm outside when we left.

A committed group of GoodGymers gathered at the huge Crisis warehouse today to help with the final stages of emptying the building.

How so?

We were lucky enough to be involved from the off in helping set up this huge Christmas warehouse operation, but we didn't expect to be invited back in March! Quelle surprise.

Anyway, it turns out many pairs of active hands make for light work, and so the runners busied themselves lifting bags, and bags, and tables, and wheeling pallets and trolleys and generally getting quite the workout.

Richard, the project co-ordinator here at Crisis joined the team on the warehouse floor throughout, assigning members to new activity every time any one looked at a loose end.

Good times

It was spacious, it was safe, it was sociable, and it was really quite an enjoyable way to spend the first Sunday in March.

Hopefully we'll be back for another final visit before the team move on.

Well done and thanks to everyone involved today, and a huge warm welcome to Clelia whose first GoodGym event this was. It was lovely to see you, and thanks for all you achieved.