I'm proud to volunteer - here's why

Conroy has been running to do good with GoodGym Lewisham for the last couple of years.

Here he writes about the impact that sharing a bit of his time each week has had for him, the friends he runs with, and the people in his community that he’s helped.

Since I started volunteering with GoodGym, every mission or group run that I’ve been on has made me feel a sense of pride.

I had volunteered with other organisations before and while I felt the activities I did were appreciated by these organisations, it never felt like they were appreciated by the people who used the service. It felt like they missed the point that I was a volunteer.

I feel proud to be a part of GoodGym because I get to see the sheer joy that our help can bring to others. There are so many ways we can help and it’s nice to know that giving your time will make a positive impact.

Supporting a community to come together

The other week, the Lewisham gang helped decorate a hall for a senior citizens group. The help we provided brought tears of joy to the lady who alone, would have spent all week trying to complete the decorating by herself. We even had time left over to clean the windows too. The help we provided in itself is immeasurable and had an instant impact.

Helping someone live independently

The mission where I think we made the biggest impact was when we ran to change a light bulb for an elderly lady. When we turned up at her house, we discovered she had been using a bedside lamp in her kitchen for the last week so she didn’t have to cook in darkness. She used to do simple tasks like this on her own but because of mobility issues she wasn’t able to anymore. She had tried to change the bulb herself but ended up cracking the light shade, so she contacted GoodGym to ask for some help.

In all the mission took less than 15 minutes – we managed to mend the shade and change the bulb too.

She tried to offer us £20 for the work we had done because she was so grateful for our help and to have proper lighting in her kitchen once again. However, we politely refused her kind gesture and reminded her that we were volunteers and it was no trouble at all.

There’s so much in it for you too

Through volunteering I’ve made a lot of friends who I never would have come into contact with had I not been volunteering. The people I’ve met through GoodGym are a fun-loving bunch – they are always happy and willing to support one another from one adventure to another.

Not everyone is doing GoodGym for the running or to keep fit, but volunteering has got them involved in running in some shape or form.

Running makes volunteering a lot more fun.

Whether it’s turning up at a race to cheer on fellow GoodGym runners or meeting up at the end of the run or a race for a good social.

GoodGym offers so much to people without losing its focus on ending social isolation. Some GoodGym runners themselves are isolated, but coming along to the weekly group runs has helped them overcome a lot of obstacles in their day-to-day life.

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the wider community and seeing the joy a volunteer brings to others is sometimes indescribable.

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Run to help people in your community

• Make a difference to an older person's life. Become a GoodGym member and start running to help an older person with tasks like changing a lightbulb or tidying the garden.
• Make your community an even better place to live. Try a GoodGym group run near you. Every week we work out by helping local community projects, and run back all within 90 minutes.
• Give Conroy a cheer for doing over 100 good deeds.