”Wow, mini-Soreen bars. You are surely spoiling us?”

Steven here - GoodGym B&D Area Activator. On Monday evening fellow GoodGymmer Virginia and I visited AbPhab Youth Club for our first mission of the year in their garden.

Used by young people that attend the centre, over the coming weeks GoodGym B&D will be helping make improvements to the garden ready for the Spring.

Kelly - one of AbPhab's amazing youth workers - gave us a warm welcome when we arrived and proudly showed us the refreshments available for us whilst volunteering in the garden - hot drinks, fruit, biscuits and - yes - mini Soreen bars! Delicious.

Deputy Manager Sarah gave us a friendly hello from the kitchen - she was busy cooking and serving hot meals to young people in attendance.

Tea's made, we got stuck in weeding an area at the back of the garden opposite the vegetable planters whilst chatting about @Virginia's recently completed TaskForce training. Congratulations Virginia on joining GoodGym B&D TaskForce!

We also spoke about Sarah & Kelly’s exciting plans for the garden. This year they want to grow a wider range of vegetables, salads and herbs for young people to use in activities. Not only cooking, but other creative activities such as making skin care products from fresh herbs grown in the garden!

We'll be returning to AbPhab every Monday evening for the next 5 weeks - sign up to a session here now!

🍿🎥✮⋆˙ See the Insta reel about this session here

☎️ The BAD phone rang (Barking and Dagenham GoodGym – see what I did there?) 15 mins before task time, our host Nassaba was checking in about H&S what with the rain and wind... then 5 mins later an email from a regular GoodGymmer (no names) that it's too wet to travel in.

💥 ...but 3 GoodGymmers persevered and we smashed our 12th task – this time at Gale Street Community Garden.

🌦️ The rain had literally just stopped by the time we arrived; the sun was threatening to come out... Peter, Virginia, Steven and our host Nassaba from Elevate Together didn’t hesitate and got stuck straight in.

♻️ Litter picking was the first task – we were led down a recently formed path between the shrubs into a newly accessible area of the garden. Waist high wild grass, birds singing, apple trees – it really is an urban paradise.

🦊 Peter and Virginia collected 8 bags of litter in total and made some curious discoveries. Half a fox carcass ( 😢 ) and a slow worm (type of snake).

🚿 Steven and Nassaba headed straight to the back of the shed to start emptying the 3rd of 4 huge rainwater tanks (1000 litres each!) in preparation to raise it up – making the taps more accessible.

😏 All felt very smug that we didn’t let Brida down – the local resident who’s been custodian of the garden for over 20 years.