One of the many ways that Our Parklife helps to deliver the legacy of London 2012 is by providing opportunities to volunteer in the local community.
Last week, a team of corporate volunteers from ENGIE, joined Groundwork London at Mobile Garden City in the latest in a series of Corporate Volunteering Days, organised by Our Parklife.
Mobile Garden City is an innovative meanwhile community garden using pre-development sites on the Park that is open from July 2015 to October 2017. Following this, the garden will move to a new location on the Park. The aims of the garden are:
· To create a welcoming, beautiful and mobile public garden;
· To demonstrate how to create productive and vibrant community spaces on meanwhile site; and
· To provide food growing, socialising and training opportunities for the whole community.
ENGIE volunteer teams undertook a variety of practical tasks to improve the community garden, facilitated by Groundwork London, including; constructing work benches, weatherproofing and decking out a donated greenhouse, creating a boardwalk, harvesting and planting.
A ‘Build a Bike Workshop’ was also organised with a local community bike social enterprise that has set up a brand new workshop at the same site as Mobile Garden City. The workshop involved a team of six people building a roadworthy vehicle, utilising a selection of parts including two donated bicycles from ENGIE. The team had access to a wide range of tools, plus an expert cycle builder and mechanic, Lawrence Mohammed, who assisted and shared his extensive knowledge and advice on general cycle safety awareness and basic servicing. The bike will go to good use initially as a pool bike for ENGIE employees who work at the Park.
“Such a joy to host today; loads of fun, an incredibly motivated, engaged and interesting group, the perfect first day in the new Pro Bike Service workshop!”
Lawrence Mohammed, Director/Had Mechanic, pro bike service
pro bike service offers their services to everyone in the local area and have consciously chosen to do this via a gift economy. This means they gift their services and offerings where needed (except any parts which clients need to purchase) and are open to receiving gifts in return. A pop up workshop will be at Here East on 4 August between 12-2pm for anyone who would like to learn more about bike maintenance. Find out more here. You can see highlights from the day including the new bike on its first outing here.
If you want to find out more about volunteering on the Park, please get in touch with us here.