The Council Community Engagement Manager for Ealing Central & Acton reached out to us, offering us space to showcase GoodGym at their Your Voice, Your Town events at Ealing Broadway.

Sevan and Kash took up the challenge to engage with residents seeking opportunities to get involved in improving their local area. The quest to share knowledge about GoodGym's work in Ealing in a fun way began a couple of weeks ago with a few brainstorming sessions. Sevan had some cool ideas. All that was needed to set up a killer marketing stall was:

• a couple of cardboard boxes
• a kids' dart board set
• an easel
• a flipchart and marker pens
• GoodGym photo printouts
• the GoodGym flag
• leaflets
• bananas, nut snack packs, apples and Haribo
• six empty 4-pint milk bottles

After some confusion about the event location and the sudden lack of internet in Ealing Broadway, Sevan and Kash finally met at the Christ the Saviour school and scrambled to do a 20-minute setup at their tables. Sellotape has proven to be superior to an old roll of Scotch tape, and the boxes were not so obvious to fold. Kash gave up on the cartons and went on a mission to fill the milk bottles with water to create a simulation of GoodGym-style weights: heavyweight shopping bags.

The setup finished just about 7:30 pm when four guests suddenly appeared at the GoodGym stall. Sevan and Kash engaged them in their game of darts with prizes, questions and a forfeit. Kash particularly enjoyed demoing her penalty exercise: shopping bag bicep curls! The game turned out to be rather difficult as no one hit the bullseye throughout the evening.

Sevan in the meantime engaged in conversations about the visitors' idea of a gym. The game and thought-provoking questions were the main drivers of grabbing the public's attention as the massive screen offered to GoodGym, despite the best effort from the Council team, couldn't connect with the laptop with the photo reel.

The people visiting the event were very enthusiastic about the idea of GoodGym and keen on learning more. Hopefully, even though they didn't win the game, maybe we won their hearts, and we'll see them at a GoodGym session!

If you are an experienced GoodGymer, join us for another event like this in Hanwell!

Do you remember the decimation of the shrub population at St Andrew's Church outdoor space last year? After many months and continuous email correspondence between Kash and the project owner John, a date was pinned down for the return of GoodGymers.

When Annabel, Sevan and Kash arrived after a rollercoaster run (there were plenty of uphills and downhills on the route around North Ealing!), the stumps of shrubs were no more. In their place, the GoodGymers found a couple of raised beds with recently planted salad leaves: radish, spinach, radicchio, and rainbow chard.

John warmly welcomed the part of the GoodGym team that arrived ahead of time and gave them a quick tour of his new project: the Pocket Garden! Then he pointed them towards two tonne bags of gravel. The contents of the bags were to be distributed in front of St Andrew's - not to create a shingle beach (beachwear in the vicinity of the church? 🫣 no way!) - but to make paths around the raised beds.

Annabel and John were at the forefront of the transformation, shovelling the shingle into a wheelbarrow and buckets, and making a lot of racket. Claire who just made her way to the task, couldn't miss that noise. As the gravel transportation roles (carrying buckets and driving the wheelbarrow) were filled by Kash and Sevan, Claire joined Carol, one of the Pocket Garden designers, in raking the stones unloaded by the beds.

Halfway through the task, Sevan recalled he had an announcement to make. He declared 750 good deeds an officially recognised milestone in GoodGym Ealing and presented Kash with a new secret GoodGym prop. Forget milestone sashes! Such a commitment to doing good deserved a bright red milestone hi-viz 🦺 which Kash wore with pride despite it looked a bit too big on her.

Once the shovelling team had hit the bottom of each tonne bag, the bags were tipped over and the contents spilt on the ground, then raked. The whole job took John, Carol and the GoodGymers less than an hour.

"It would take us weeks to finish!" - Carol

You may think that fewer GoodGymers means less done. In tonight's case, it was quite the opposite! A smaller group worked in our favour as no one was getting in each other's way and we seemed to have just the right number of hands!

"Thanks again to you and your team for a brilliant stint of gravel spreading this evening. We are absolutely thrilled with the results." - John

Next week we are staying close to Ealing Broadway and running to the Transition Garden in Lammas Enclosure to continue the maintenance work there. Sign up now!