We gathered outside the FGS offices for today’s warm-up, ready for our task in Draper Hall.

What is Draper Hall?

Draper Hall is a charity in the heart of Elephant & Castle bringing arts, culture, fitness, warmth and hospitality to the Draper Estate and surrounding area. The charity’s aim is to, ‘join together through a collective effort, to provide what the community needs.’

The Centre runs after-school clubs, Stay Warm hubs, exercise classes and room-hire.

Run by Sandy and Chalice, this hive of activity is continually busy, so a few pairs of hands to help with a couple of big clearing tasks today proved very timely.

After a decent-length run, expertly navigated and paced by Matt, we arrived at the centre, glad to be given the opportunity to catch our breath as we waited for the walking group.

At shortly after 2, we were ready to be briefed by Sandy in the warm Draper office.

Four fantastic tasks...

We initially started with four tasks: one team on shed clearing, another on boiler room clearing; a team dispatched to nearby Sherston House for cupboard clearing, and Ashik on locker-code-unscrambling (as it sounds).

As always, the team’s pace was phenomenal. And this task didn’t just involve lots of physical activity: the team had to dedicate a lot of brain power figuring out best use of space; what should be kept, what needed to go, in order to make optimum use of these precious storage areas for the Hall and the community groups who use them.

And yes, the time flew!

At 3pm, teams still had to load items back in the shed and commence the big clean-up effort. But we got there, thanks to their speed and fantastic project management by Sandy.

At shortly before 3:30 we were posing for a final picture in the pretty garden, joined by Chalice who’d popped in to see how we were getting on (and who’d created game-changing task sheets in preparation for today).

We headed back to the office, in two teams once again, promising to return in the not-too-distant future.

A brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable effort.

...And not forgetting a huge cheer for Southwark Area Activator Sam, who arranged the task and put us in touch with Sandy and Chalice. (Keep an eye out for future tasks at Draper Hall…).

Until next time.

The rain was setting well and truly in on my arrival to FGS HQ this morning. But grey skies and downpours were no match for the team, who arrived promptly at 11:30, and gathered for a briefing on today's task.

We were headed to Borough Cooperative on nearby Borough High Street.

A volunteer-operated Food Hub that works to tackle food insecurity and food waste in South London, Borough Food Cooperative has been offering subsidized groceries to the local community since October 2020.

The support and commitment they receive from volunteers enables the Food Hub to offer multiple sessions to members over the course of the week.

The route to the task...

Today's run to the task was expertly led by Matt, who decided the 1km direct route to the task was probably insufficient for our fitness needs, and so we took a 'little' detour via Tabard Gardens where we 'enjoyed' some single-leg squats and other balance moves, along with a few sprints around the football pitch, before making our way to the task.

Types of lettuce

We were greeted by Brian, who took us into the adjoining hall to sort through crates of fresh vegetables. This involved stripping dead leaves, and removing any of the more tired-looking additions from the crates.

The variety of vegetables was vast, with every lettuce from romaine to red lettuce (we're not sure of its exact name), kale, sprouts, chard, fennel and a lot of carrots.

As usual, the team whizzed through the activity, and it wasn't long before we were sweeping up discarded leaves and awaiting our next task.

Brian divided us into two teams, effectively an indoor and outdoor crew.

Tom was tasked with project-managing the garden clean-up, which saw this dedicated group blitz the front garden of weeds and debris in the short space of time we had left. Filling three large rubbish bags, it was wet and muddy work, but nonetheless one that produced some decent before and after pics.

The indoor team, meanwhile, busied themselves sorting through the last few crates of veg, and sweeping the shop floor area.

The time flew by and it was hard to believe we'd been at the Coop an hour and a quarter as we proceeded to pose for our final picture.

A task to remember

It was a magnificent effort, with not only bundles achieved in terms of produce-sorting and gardening, but the interactions we enjoyed with Coop staff and members really made it a lunch hour to remember.

We strolled back through Borough's bustling streets, with the team heading off to enjoy a well-deserved bite to eat.

A big shout-out to everyone, especially to Matt for heading up a great run; to Craig and David, whose first GoodGym this was, and who did fantastically.

And lastly, a shout-out to GoodGym Southwark's Area Activator Sam, who introduced us to the Borough Cooperative, and organised today's task.

Great work.

Until next time.