For several Tuesday evenings now we have been supporting the amazing Under One Sky charity get food to rough sleepers around Victoria. It's a task that makes a difference to the men and women who struggle to access resources. It's brilliant when it goes to plan, but it's not always smooth sailing!

The lows? Last night when we arrived on a freeing cold evening the bakery had shut early so had no donations for us to collect - plus the sub zero temps of course!

The highs? Luckily we had bought some food with us to take to Under One Sky, so when Pret also turned us down we made our way (thanks to Jessica's ace map reading skills) to drop it off. A little bit goes a long way.

Hopefully we're going to be teaming up with UOS to make the sandwiches to hand out going forward - so watch this space for more updates!

A welcome start to 2025 group runs for GoodGym Richmond as we met at Tap Tavern to warm-up together and run the 3.5km route to The Purple Elephant Project, supporting children's mental health.

Task owner Jane met us at the centre with a great list of tasks ready for us to get stuck into in the children's play garden: clear up the leaves, reattach the privacy screening, fix up the den with astroturf underneath, re-support the bird feeder and move a gazebo to the shed. Between a team of happy and well-warmed-up helpers the tasks were all complete in 45 minutes, with a short stop for leftover Christmas chocolates and biscuits from Jane before the group ran back off past Twickenham stadium to Richmond town centre, a lovely steady 7km run.

Seven super heroes in red shirts (although covered up tonight in warmer layers) came to help out at St Christopher’s Children’s Home in Twickenham.

A regular task, we were back and having made easy work of the front gardens, tonight we went back to back. We searched the shed for tools, and got cracking.

Africa, Chris, JP and Lucy took on the bush-tucker challenge. Although there was less tucking and more chopping, as the shears gave two of the unruly bushes a good trim. Down in the vegetable patch Adam, Cathy and Susan started on clearing the weeds which had run wild in the allotment. Little mountains of hedge trimmings, leaves and green leafy weeds piled up on the compost heap, and before long we have two neat and tidy bushes and a tidy patch. It’s always amazing to see the transformation that we can do in such a short time. Well done tonight gang, bush chopper challenge complete.

It was time for take two of the new mission to transport food to rough sleepers in Westminster, and this time we had success!

Great to see Khai and Katie back again, and to welcome Susan to a new task in the borough.

When I arrived with a huge bag of donations from Waste Not Want Not, the team were already waiting for me with the donations from the bakery. Great to see that this week the good stuff was saved from the bin!

We redistributed the sandwiches, pastries and other baked goods between the four of us and headed to Under One Sky who were already busy supporting those in the area who need it most.

On a night when the temperatures had dropped significantly it was great to be able to hand over the important resources. Great work everybody!

Next week a group will be meeting to distribute clothes and bedding on the Strand and we'll be back collecting more food the following Tuesday!