Together to offer help to others and improve the community without expecting anything in return. As part of these efforts, I participated in a volunteer activity to Care 4 Calais to Sorting and organizing clothes and shoes for refugees, which aims to meet their basic needs and provide them with comfort.

✅ This session focused on sorting men’s clothing first, with each piece classified separately according to size, along with sorting men’s shoes by the appropriate sizes.

✅ After the sorting process was completed, the clothes were placed in designated storage bags to ensure they are easily identifiable when preparing and picking up orders directly.

✅ Some bags specifically for travelers were prepared after the sorting and arrangement process. Each bag is a complete set that includes t-shirts, shorts, trousers, hoodies, underwear, and socks.

The goal of this sorting process was to facilitate storage and distribution, ensuring that the clothes are neatly arranged and organized, allowing for quick and direct access when preparing orders.

The Goodgym crew came down to Maida Vale underground station on Thursday evening to lend a hand with the Achilles International group run session. We host weekly workouts with the all abilities sports charity in a range of London locations, and this week we were running at Paddington Rec Track.

It was wonderful to run with our team of visually impaired runners (including some of who had also ran the Runthrough Chase the Moon 10km and 5km races just the other night!) alongside experienced and new running guides. Excellent performances from everyone, who took on recovery runs, tempo efforts, marathon training sessions and interval workouts on this public track.

Our next session will be at Stratford Olympic Park on Thursday 6th March:

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/come-and-guide-run-with-achilles-international-olympic-park-stratford-route-a6f34119-2ee1-423c-af26-d1ef84572c61

When Sevan and Kash reached the group run starting location, they wondered if Mohamed had already arrived - they couldn't see his red t-shirt anywhere. Suddenly, they noticed a ninja figure clad all in black. It was Mohamed in his brand new 50 good deeds t-shirt that had been delivered today! A leafletting task was a fitting one for the debut of the black top - you don't want to bring that unique outfit to a painting session, Mohamed!

The three followed Uxbridge Road to get from Ealing Broadway to Acton town centre, then hit the Mill Hill Park streets. That was the area chosen to announce the departure of the Reduce and Recycle Hub - a monthly event encouraging the residents to think about what they consume, reduce how much they waste, and recycle their items responsibly at the hub or elsewhere. Sadly, the March event was going to be the last of the series and tonight was supposed to be our final task for that community project.

While distributing the leaflets, we encountered uneven surfaces lurking in the dark (fortunately, no one fell after tripping), friendly cats, No junk mail letterboxes and other attractions. Despite the team being small, we managed to distribute most of the flyers within one hour task and ended up with a small stack of undistributed leaflets. Since it is the last instalment of the hub, we'll be loyal to the principle of the hub and reduce waste ourselves by finishing off the distribution on Thursday evening - come and join the final-final task if you are around!

When a Sunday afternoon task gets suddenly cancelled, your mind scrambles to answer the question: what am I going to tell my team?. You scan the possibilities and reach out to your Taskforce for ideas. What can you find to do in Southall? We had already found plenty of litter in the morning - what else is there? The answer: a Tiny Forest and DIY shops that have everything!

February calls for the carbon storage survey at the Tiny Forests, so we recalled how we had done that citizen science task last year. This time we visited a DIY store and procured two tape measures (which we can bring to future surveys), then set off to the Southall Recreation Ground. On the way, one of us fell victim to an uneven pavement but bravely raised again and soldiered through the task.

Steph, Mohamed, Liuba and Kash split into pairs and surveyed 18 trees, measuring their dimensions and counting the number of stems. The four could not find more tree tags on the site and wrapped up the session slightly ahead of time, then split to enjoy the rest of their Sunday afternoons.