Email: getinvolved@goodgym.org
GoodGym helps you get fit by doing good. We’re a group of runners, walkers, and cyclists who combine regular exercise with helping our communities.
- Run, walk or cycle to help community projects with practical tasks
- We run in groups to do physical tasks for community organisations
- We run, walk, or cycle to help older people with one-off tasks they can no longer do alone, such as clearing gardens
- We run, walk or cycle to make social visits to isolated older people
GoodGym arose out of a frustration with normal gyms being a waste of energy and human potential - and responding to growing loneliness in cities. It started when founder Ivo started running to deliver the newspaper to Terry, an older Hackney resident in 2007. Terry was housebound and didn’t see any friends on a regular basis. Ivo wasn’t exercising much and needed a reason to run.
Over the course of a few years they became friends and Ivo learned to love running. He started getting other people to do the same thing; combining their run with helping an older neighbour.
In September 2009 we formed as a non profit company and in 2011 we started meeting up in groups to run to help community projects. People in Bristol and Liverpool picked up on the idea and started running sessions too. A sense of community started to emerge and we started running sessions all over East London around the time of the 2012 Olympics. In 2015 we registered as a charity.