Each Monday morning, GoodGym lend a hand to the South Ealing Food Cupboard, helping the brilliant team of volunteers prepare surplus food for the local community. This week, Martin and Iram’s help was especially valuable, the volunteer numbers were a little thin on the ground! For a while it looked like it would just be three of us tackling the heavy lifting, but luckily one more volunteer arrived just as the van pulled up. And just in time, it was a bumper load, completely filling the van. In fact, the driver hadn’t even managed to fit everything in!

As we began unloading, we were met with an unexpected challenge: a wave of rebellious limes making a break for freedom, rolling across the van and down onto the pavement. There was also a heart-stopping moment when a trolley, laden with food, toppled over... but apart from a couple of unlucky yoghurt pots, there were no major casualties.

The haul itself was a good one: piles of cabbages and green beans, a fridge full of yoghurt, boxes of loose sausage rolls and lots of other goodies. Thanks to teamwork, quick thinking, and a dash of lime-chasing agility, everything was unloaded and sorted by midday.

A pallet packed with donated food for St Mary's Food Cupboard was already waiting in front of the church door for the early birds from the first volunteer shift. Wayne arrived just after 8am to open the door and let Kash, Roger and Gary unload the cartons with an abundance of exotic fruit: bananas, melons, limes, pineapples, and oranges.

Sevan came just in time to swap with Roger, and embarked on a task to sort oranges that had arrived in impressive quantities. He indentified the good, the bad, and the ugly citruses, and discarded the mouldy and the squashed ones.

Wayne and Gary tried to give out some of the oranges ahead of the afternoon distribution as there wasn't even enough space to display them. They offered fruit to the parents with children heading to the local school, yet, with not much success. Kash attempted only once to "sell" some surplus oranges, and found that the parents weren't very trusting to strangers - even the strangers emerging from the house of God. Ouch.

There was no better way to cope with such rejection than flattening cardboard boxes, carrying empty crates outside the church and energetic hoovering. Having conquered the slightly bad feeling with the power of good, Sevan and Kash finished the task and left the rest in the hands of the next shift of GoodGymers.

I enjoyed unpacking and placing them ready to distribute to the poor and needy I’d also like to thank all those who assisted with nonverbal instctions any Mary’s and at good gym.,They also kept a good eye on any possible risks to safety as I am quite deaf.,I did note however that most things done at church are spoken so it may not the best place to do longer term or paid work.

Each Monday morning GoodGym help the South Ealing Food Cupboard volunteers prepare to give away food to the community. Supermarkets and other organisations donate surplus food to prevent it being wasted. Lots of heavy lifting and speedy organisation is required to get a van-load of food ready to be shared!

This week Afshin, Mehmet, Martin, and Iram were on hand for the South Ealing Food Cupboard shift. The van was running fashionably late (well over an hour behind schedule!) but everyone stayed as long as they could. The extra time was spent soaking up the sunshine and chatting with the other volunteers, a real calm before the storm.

When the van finally rolled in it was worth the wait: a bumper haul of juice, potatoes, spring onions, carrots, broccoli, salad leaves, and crate after crate of assorted veg and meal-prep boxes. Sorting the meal prep boxes was no quick task, so in the end they were handed semi-sorted to the customers who were more than happy to rummage through and grab what they fancied.

It was a whirlwind shift of heavy lifting, speedy sorting, and plenty of teamwork!

Busy double shift today at the community cupboard. Due to banana overdose early in the morning we did our best to lure the local kids to take some as well on their way to school.🍌 We welcomed Beck to the team🥳 who was greeted by a 45 mins delivery delay before she could eventually experience the speedy and efficient work this wonderful group does every Monday morning.

Each Monday morning, GoodGym lends a hand at the South Ealing Food Cupboard helping the wonderful volunteers sort through surplus food and get it ready to share with the local community. This morning Martin, Beata, and Iram were on hand to unload the lorry and unpack a varied selection of food.

The delivery included cartons of oat milk, cranberry juice, huge cabbages, potatoes, carrots and bread. There was a brief debate over whether the oat milk was past its best, but upon investigation we learnt the date had simply been misprinted. What looked like June (6) was actually September (9). No oat milk spilled needed to be spilled! Unusually, there was no meat or ready meals this week. Instead, there were loads of ready made sandwiches.

With a prompt delivery and a smaller haul than the last few weeks, the team had everything sorted in record breaking time!