Our group run this week was flyering for Coco Collective which is a community garden in Bellingham, they also have a site in Catford. We were promoting their volunteer sessions and also their wellbeing sessions which started in April.

Welcome to Mo - your first group run was a long run so hopefully you join us next week for a short one to St Mary's Church!

When we arrived at the community garden, the first task was locating the flyers which was super easy after the last time when we had to find them in the pitch black garden having never been there before!!

We then ran to meet Marta at the designated flyering start point, only about 8 minutes later than I'd said...

We split into 2 groups: one coming with me and one with Steve. Armed with highlighted maps of the area, we went our opposite ways with the aim to meet back at the start point at 8pm.

100's of flyers delivered, all fingers in tact and hopefully we have spread the word about this wonderful community project!

I will admit it was further than I expected but everyone made it - well done!!

This dedicated bunch weren't phased by the prospect of 2500 flyers...maybe we were still when we were down to 4 (hope your knee is feeling better Adam).

The first task of the evening was to find the community garden - ✅

The second task of the evening was to get in the community garden - ✅

The third task of the evening was to find the flyers hidden within the community garden - ✅ after me and Julian reading the instructions a couple of times and a paving slab falling on Julian's foot!

By then it was finally time to start flyering. We split into 2 groups and gave ourselves 25min to get as much flyering done as possible within a specific area on our maps (thanks for highlighting Oli). We then regrouped at the community garden to check how many leaflets we had left.

Restocked (or returning our optimistic pile of leaflets) and we headed back out for another 10min to tackle another area before it was time to head back to Glass Mill.

Well done Team! We are going to be covering another area in Catford to spread the word about the project at the end of April.

CoCo Collective is an Afro diaspora-led group using the processes of growing food as a way to educate, celebrate and connect to other sites and communities. CoCo Collective have just started an exciting new project in Catford - turning a disused part of an allotment into a place to grow heritage food and herbs, hold music and cultural events and run educational workshops on food growing and mental and physical wellbeing.

I arrived at their Catford site on Sunday morning (Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!) and was instantly made welcome and shown some of the great efforts that have gone into the site already since the ground clearing process in January. A small forest of brambles had been all but cleared, and today volunteer numbers steadily grew to take on turning and clearing the soil, building a greenhouse, preparing some raised beds and getting some composting underway.

Time flew by with lots of discussion about future collaborations with GoodGym, other amazing projects around London and even internationally, and all the upcoming work and projects on the site - I recommend this mission to everyone next time it appears on the GG website!