With the return to school looming, there are parents across the land cheering (including Rebecca) and children lamenting the end of the summer holidays. Back to school means new school clothes and that's no different for Care4Calais' clients, some of whom will be going to UK schools for the first time.

Packing school clothes and shoes was the priority for the GoodGym team today. With building work ongoing at our usual location, the stock needed was spread across different places and the stock room wasn't as well organised as it usually is.

First up was to find school shoes for the new students. With the smallest ones starting at nursery, there were some tiny feet to protect and everyone was working at at different scale to the usual Care4Calais sessions. With some sizes unavailable, they did the best they could, hoping that larger pairs would quickly be grown into.

Then, there was a change of location to Care4Calais' offsite storage to find clothes for the children. Boxes were helpfully labelled "10-11 years, grey" or "4-5 years, grey", which was great as most schools expected grey clothing and each GoodGymer was working on packs for a particular age group. Peering into the boxes, the sizes and colours were all jumbled together and not as ordered as they claimed, leading to a lot of rummaging and calling to others when unexpected sizes or colours were found.

Even with the extra challenges and the mid-session road trip, the team managed to complete all of the requests and clothe all the children, even if a few will have a slightly baggy style for a term or two.

Another session with Care4Calais, but Steph Ducat was the only regular to assist Tamzin. Today we welcomed Sylvia for her 1st Goodgym session. Both Ariane and Maxime are not newbies, but also their 1st session with Care4Calais. Today was not our usual task with preparing clothes with different items and sizes. Tamzin and her husband are having works done in the house, which also includes the different rooms where loads of items are stored and packed once prepared. Our mission was to move all the items from the main storage on the 1st floor to the 2nd floor in order for the contractors to be able to work in those.In one hour with some lifting, moving boxes, bags etc the team with Tamzin and her husband cleared the room. Tamzin was overwelmed and didnt think we would have completed that task so quickly. We all stopped for some water as very hot and dusty due to the works being done in the house. As we still had 1 hour left, Tamzin said lets go to the ware house in Ealing to prepare bags/parcels for the 4pm collection. This was also a first as short road trip!!No singing in the car. Once arrived we started to unload the car and get parcels ready with adding shioes to the ready made bags, but we encounted a small problem. We were missing bags to add the shoes, so Steph Ducat ran to local shops to find bags Tamzin needed...not easy task as they didnt have what we wanted .....so after 3 stores found what we needed. Back at the ware house and the crew cracked on and all the shoes were added, labels added and boxed/bagged by destination ready for thwe 4pm collection. Shoe-t for the stars!

Care4Calais had a big job for GoodGym this afternoon. To prepare around 130 packs of clothing for refugees in one hotel. Some of the residents had been given clothes previously and today, the second big delivery would complete the task.

Boxes of clothes were piled up waiting for the team, who welcomed back Mohamed for his first GoodGym Ealing task since moving back west 👋. The ask was fairly straight forward, to make standard clothing packs in a single size at a time, on a larger scale than normal. Everything was set up like a production line to make the system quick and easy:

1. Open a bag 🛍️
2. Place socks inside 🧦
3. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
4. Add men's underwear 🩲
5. Add a hoodie 🧥
6. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
7. Add jogging bottoms 👖
8. Add 2 t-shirts 👕👕
9. Done ✅

With much of the clothing being black or navy, the team needed ways to make sure the right clothes ended up in the right bags.

"Are these hoodies or joggers?" - GoodGymer
"Which half naked man is on the pack?"
"The hoodies have topless men on them too, which doesn't make sense" - Tamzin, task owner

The "naked man process" worked up until the team realised that some packs had 2 hoodies and no trousers in them. Cue a rapid search through 40ish packs to identify which ones needed fixing.

Despite the hoodie issues early on, an improved system meant that the job of creating the packs finished early, with a range of small, medium, large and XL bags tightly packed into boxes.

After the rapid and fairly repetitive production line, came the slow, creative piece. Fitting all of those boxes into 2 family cars needed thought, inventiveness and some force. With both cars full to bursting and ready to be delivered to Care4Calais' beneficiaries, it was time to wrap up and wander home in the late afternoon sun.

Today's visit to Care4Calais provided a lot of variety, with plenty of different jobs to work through. There was variety in the location too, almost, as the GoodGymers were supposed to meet at a storage unit, then a last minute change had them unexpectedly climbing back up the hill to the Care4Calais HQ.

Once in the right place, Kash and Sevan started outside (in the shade, thankfully), on a fold out table adding socks to boxes and boxes full of pre-made clothing packs. They came out of the car, were socked up, then went straight back in. Getting them back in involved a complicated game of Tetris for one person. 😅

Moving to the cool of indoors, there were a handful of new requests to fulfil, with many of them needing shoes. Shoes are constantly moving around Care4Calais' on-site storage, so task owner Tamzin often needs to explain the new system. This time, boxes were perched on top of other boxes in a corner and there were a lot of used running shoes. Kash was on the hunt for some size 11s and could only find some New Balance with all sizing labels rubbed clean. Hopefully they're the right size for the recipient. 🤞

Next was a quick session of making extra large men's standard clothing packs, then onto sorting and sizing an big pile of men's donations. The same pile that had been left to one side last week as they focused on women's stock. Today, Sevan became the sizing model, as everyone tried to work out whether unlabelled clothes were small, medium or large.

Time flew by and Tamzin was happy to have all of the jobs on her list crossed off. For the GoodGymers that was rewarding too and it was great to spend 2 hours at an indoor task, away from the heat of the afternoon sun! 👌🌞

On the hottest day in the country so far this year, 4 GoodGymers arrived at one of their regular Care4Calais sessions not knowing what to expect. Three of them had run 9km from their previous task in Southall and were hot, hot, hot! 🥵

Task owner Tamzin welcomed the group with cold drinks and pistachio ice cream, which made everyone perk up and got them ready for the task ahead. Other volunteers had been earlier in the day to prepare clothing packs for refugees, so sorting new donations was the main task for the GoodGymers.

Tamzin brought in one set of donations at a time, which seemed to be never ending. Carrier bags, boxes and a suitcase all made appearances with the priority being separating out the women's, men's and children's clothes, then sizing and storing all of the female attire. Some of the sizing was more hands on (or body on), especially when the stated sized looked totally wrong. Surprisingly, there was a lot of summer clothing to work through at the start of the season. On the other hand, a few jokers thought that donating winter scarves and gloves in the current heat wave would be helpful 😒.

"Those trousers are more commando" - Steph
"You mean camo?" - Sevan
"😳" - Steph

Some more novelty items were found including a yellow "Me call shenanigans" t-shirt that GoodGymers had sorted and packed before (old photo added to report) and had been returned by one of Care4Calais' clients. Maybe it wasn't for them. Kash also found a mysterious object.

"Is this a skirt? Oh. No, it has opening only on one side. Is it a bag?" - Kash
"It's a pillowcase" - Sevan
"I've got one of those too" - Steph
"Well at least there's 2 of them" - Sevan

Stacks and stacks of the women's clothes were sized and neatly stacked to go into stock and those that didn't make the grade were set aside to be donated to other charities. That never ending supply of bags, well, ended thanks to some great teamwork 🤜🤛. The replenished stock room was now ready for the next set of volunteers to prepare clothing packs when new request come in.

Donations that come in to Care4Calais are mysterious. GoodGymers don't often know who has donated sacks of clothing. Sometimes members of the public, sometimes a church or mosque. Today, task owner Tamzin had a surprise for the team. Two crates full of shoes that had been donated from the set of a TV series called Heads of State.

Rainu and Sevan spent most of the session untangling and pairing shoes, then grouping them by size. Once they'd worked out the UK to EU size mapping, they made good progress through the shoes and sandals. The second crate included 3 zipped bags and when they were opened, they were filled with slippers and Ugg-style boots. Great for the winter, not as useful in summer, so they were put to one side. Upstairs, Kash had paired up with Tamzin to prepare standard clothing packs for women in different sizes.

Rainu had a great time, saying:

Just so rewarding...back breaking ha ha. Well worth it. Luved it. Great team work..felt so part of team thank you Tamzin and GoodGym guys

At the end of the session, everyone came together to prepare requests that had come in, with trousers, tops and newly restocked shoes being bagged up for beneficiaries. New clothes, shoes and packs were organised in the stock room, before everyone wrapped up for the day.