In 2024 Library of Things celebrates 10 years of making borrowing useful household items available for everyone in the area. It's cheaper than buying, convenient and kinder for the planet.

This year, Ealing Broadway became yet another of the 19 locations. Shortly after the launch of the new spot, Ealing folk has been renting on average 30 library items per week: drills, sewing machines, saws, hedge trimmers, and audience favourites: the steam cleaner and pressure washer!

Could this get any better? Of course! More people could learn about this fantastic initiative. Kyra from the Library of Things met five GoodGymers at the Ealing Broadway shopping centre, which transformed over the weekend into a Christmas market. The temperatures dropped so much this week that no one doubted we entered the winter season. Kyra was very pleased to see that our team braved the cold to support the Library of Things in spreading the word about the new location.

Supplied with stacks of leaflets, walkers Chris, Kash and Sevan, runner Mohamed and cyclist Gus teamed up with Kyra for a walking task on the streets towards Ealing Common. Keeping hands warm while trying to separate the individual leaflets was a challenge. Luckily, no fingers were frostbitten or dog-bitten during the flyer delivery. By the end of the session, only a thin stack of leaflets remained, which GoodGymers promised to deliver with a bunch of extra flyers to other towns in the borough at the nearest occasion.

We are hoping that Ealing residents will forget Black Friday and swap the shopping craze for more sustainable renting things binge!

This morning's Pitshanger Junior parkrun had a glut of volunteers. In fact the run director, Karen, was heard to say:

"We have so many volunteers today that we have a page 2!"

As there were so many helpers, the 3 GoodGymers all ended up at the same marshal post. Each took different routes to get there. One was signed up as a marshal on the roster, one hadn't signed up and the other one was running late and arrived after the runners had set off. They grouped together to give the children and parents and extra loud cheer at the first/last marshal point on the course.

86 children in all finished the course and there were almost as many adults running the 2km too. Impressively, one child counted 25 high fives on their way round from 8 official marshal points.

After a quick refuel, Kash and Sevan headed onto the day's next task woodchipping a new path at Pear Tree Park.

There are some Goodgym tasks that are so impactful that you dont actually realise how much so until you do the do...

Today was one of those tasks

What started out as a networking opportunity to promote GoodGym turned into a protest march alongside the Mothers Together team to share the message of

Drop the knife... save a life

This march from Harvey Park to Langley Memorial Park was organised by the Mothers Together campaign leaders (Madhuri and Julie) alongside the mum of Temur (who was sadly killed by a knife a year ago), Tatiyana.

Ruth, Rosa, Mabu and I were all involved in the march to show how the community connects with the drop the knife message.

Pray with your feet

After doing the march we descended at the Pavillion at Langley Memorial Park and intently listened to all the key speakers about the community action needed to help young people out of this unnecessary need to carry a knife. As Comstable Sunny put it

Today is not a moment.. its a movement

With the minute silence completed we arrived inside the hall where Dr and Mohamed were waiting ready to talk to any residents about GoodGym

Peace Garden

One of the initiatives of this campaign is to create a peace garden. After Becs gave us an overview and with a few tools at hand we decided to make a start. Savi and Mohamed did a cracking job of pulling out all the high growth whilst Rosa and Ruth gave the garden a tidy up.

We had help from the Together as One volunteers too which was great as many hands make light work!

So much accomplished in just one afternoon!

Thank you all for getting involved