This was another fun friendly session for the Brighton Multicultural Women (BMWs) Bike Club!

The BMWs started in 2021 because multicultural women wanted to meet together, have fun, exercise, practice English, and learn to ride bikes in our Brighton & Hove city.

It was a joy to buddy up Cristabel and Lili who were keen to learn how to ride on the tarmac paths in Preston Park. Wonder Women!

Change (the garden) Grow (some vegetables) Life (enjoy it)

That’s what eight GoodGymers did this week, at Change Grow Life in Richmond House. We removed bind weeds and brambles to shape the ground of what will become a green oasis for gardening activities and growing vegetables.

Change Grow Live (CGL) offers support services to help people make positive changes in their lives, including help with substance misuse, mental health, and social challenges. They also have a gardening project where they are creating a new garden space, potentially aimed at providing therapeutic or social support through gardening as a tool to help people make positive changes in their lives. This could involve creating new garden spaces, growing vegetables, offering gardening activities as part of their support programs, or collaborating with other organizations to promote gardening for wellbeing.

With this social mission GoodGym Brighton also helped CGL to get ready for the memorial service that they hold annually on National Remembrance Day, which is the last Friday in July, to honour those who have lost their lives to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2025, this falls on July 25th. The garden might not be fully ready by then, but it shows some flourishing plants that were hidden by the brambles until now.

This was a very satisfying social mission!

Refugee Week is the world’s largest arts & culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Established in 1998 in the UK, Refugee Week takes place every year around World Refugee Day (20th June) and has since grown into a global movement.

The theme for 2025 is “Community as a Superpower” and GoodGym Brighton took part super-powering the Family event organised by Caroline (independent bookshop Afrori Books) for the Brighton Book Festival, a grassroots festival promoting writers from underrepresented backgrounds.

We helped kids to express their creativity and bring colour to flags, while learning where the refugees come from. Refugees in Brighton primarily come from Ukraine due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis, but also from other regions like Afghanistan and Syria. In the year ending March 2025, the top countries of origin for people seeking asylum in the UK were Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh, and Syria.

Brighton and Hove is a city of sanctuary, and GoodGym Brighton is proud to offer our superpower to welcome all!