It's our Birthday!

To celebrate GoodGym Oxford being 6 years old a bevy of GoodGymers got together at County Hall. Of course we had to include a Good Deed in our birthday celebrations (no Wednesday is complete without one), so we packaged up 3 boxes of old trainers to send to JogOn for repurposing and recycling. These had been collected up from friends, family and colleagues over the previous few weeks, saving them from going to landfill.

With 26 GoodGymers in attendance that task was complete in record time, leaving us the rest of the evening to chat over drinks and nibbles, reminiscing about the past 6 years and speculating about what the future might bring.

Our 6 year Good Deed count is 8038. Happy Birthday to Us!

During Christmas 2023, inspired by two CAMHS volunteer elves, Christmas for CAHMS ran a paper chain making project. It went down so well in CAMHS units (CAMHS stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) that they’re going to do it again in 2024, and this time we got involved!

The paper chains are a team effort - they will be started by members of the public (like us), and then the young people will connect them together when they arrive in the CAMHS units. Each paper chain will have a cheesy cracker joke written on the inside to add an extra bit of fun during assembly.

We all gathered at City Hall and set up in the reception area. Drinks (some more fortifying than others.......) were provided by Markand we set to work.

After an hour of trimming, writing and chatting we managed to produce 138 slips and a packet of blank ones for other elves to use.

A lovely wholesome, and WARM, task!

For a handful of years we have had regular sessions throughout autumn and winter doing a deep clean of the Oxford Mutual Aid food bank in Cowley. The day-to-day operations of food bank leave little time for the kind of thorough clean which involves moving shelving and crates, so we try to lighten the load for their regular volunteers by taking on this task.

We tackle a section of the main hall each month (where toiletries, baby supplies and ambient food are stored), and make sure that the whole kitchen gets a clean every month (which is where the fresh fruit and veg is stored). It's an "all hands on deck" operation, involving moving stock, shifting shelves and crates, sweeping, mopping, dusting, and bleaching.

Session one of AW 2024/5 now complete!

Welcome to GoodGym Sasha and Max!

Wednesday evening's task was a race against the sunset: We just about won!

Throughout autumn and winter Boundary Brook Nature Park do a lot of work to maintain their grassland areas. This mostly involves cutting back the brambles, which can easily take over and swamp more delicate plants, then digging out their roots. After all the recent rain this proved to be a very squelchy task, and the roots tenacious, but we managed to dig out several wheelbarrow loads of bramble roots before darkness stopped play. We were hoping to spot some bats in the reserve as darkness fell, but sadly none were visible - perhaps they were hiding from the rain?!