Greenlight Funding 2025-26

Vote here!

Greenlight is ECCAN's seedgrant fund for climate action projects delivered by community groups within the City of Edinburgh. This year we have £115,000 to distribute across the city.

Applications closed on 15th August and voting is open from now (18th) until 29th August (5pm). Please read the following notes in order to cast your votes. If you have any questions or issues with the process please contact us via greenlight@eccan.scot.

How To Vote

Applications are categorised by the amount of funds each project requested. There are 5 categories: £10k-£20k; £5k-£10k; £1k-£5k; £500-£1k; and £350-£500. For your vote to be counted, you are required to cast votes in all 5 categories. We will use a transferable vote system, seen by many as a more democratic, progressive system compared to the more traditional First Past The Post (https://electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/). For your vote to be counted, you are required to cast votes for your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices, in each of the 5 size categories. Please do not vote for the same project twice - your vote will not be counted.

The applicants are listed below - for fairness, each one has been given the same word count limit to describe their project. Please read all project descriptions before casting your votes. Please note that only ECCAN members (both organisations and individuals) are eligible to vote (join for free here!). When voting we will ask you to enter your name and email address (the one associated with your ECCAN membership, so you can only vote once). The ballot is secret - we just use your name/email address to validate that you are an ECCAN member. When you are ready to vote, please use this link. If you have any questions or issues with the process please contact us via greenlight@eccan.scot.

Projects to choose from: Category A: £10,001 - £20,000

  • Amount requested: £20,000

    Greening Leith Walk – Living Walls for a Healthier Urban Environment

    This project will install living walls along Leith Walk to improve air quality, support biodiversity, and create a greener urban environment. Living walls—vertical gardens made with plants that absorb emissions, trap dust, and attract pollinators—have shown proven success globally. Inspired by ecological design studies, I self-funded a pilot wall on a local yoga studio using ivy (air-purifying), coral bell (dust-trapping), jasmine star (temperature-regulating), and lavender (pollinator-attracting). The project received strong community interest and positive results. With funding, I aim to expand these installations across Leith Walk, partnering with local businesses and residents. This initiative will enhance wellbeing, environmental quality, and community pride, serving as a scalable model for other areas of Edinburgh.

  • Amount requested: £19,950

    Growing Gorgie Farm

    Gorgie Community Farm is a much-loved green space in the heart of Edinburgh that brings people and nature together. Our new project, Growing Gorgie Farm, is all about helping local people learn to grow their own food, live more sustainably, and feel connected to their environment and community.

    ·      This project will repair and restore our existing greenhouses, which have been unused due to damage and lack of resources. Once fixed, these greenhouses will be used to grow fruit, vegetables, and herbs, creating a hands-on learning space where people of all ages can explore how to grow food, from seed to plate.

    ·      We will run weekly workshops led by an experienced community gardener, who will teach skills like planting, composting, caring for plants, and cooking with what you grow. These sessions will be free and open to everyone, with a special focus on families, young people, and people who might not otherwise have access to green space or fresh food. There will also be community growing days, harvest celebrations, and shared meals that bring people together.

    ·      The project supports climate action by encouraging local food growing, reducing food miles, and teaching sustainable gardening methods. We’ll also install water butts and composting systems to demonstrate how small, practical changes can make a big environmental impact.

    ·      The benefits of this project will be felt across the community. People will gain practical skills, confidence, and improved wellbeing. Children will learn where food comes from. Neighbours will get to know one another. And a currently underused part of the farm will be transformed into a vibrant, productive space.

    ·      This is a partnership project delivered by Gorgie Community Farm and Capella Charity. The farm has a long history of running inclusive community projects and is already a trusted local hub. Capella Charity brings specialist knowledge in education, health, and supporting people with complex needs, including through their Teens+ service, which helps young adults develop life skills in meaningful, real-world environments. Together, we’re creating a space that welcomes everyone, no matter your age, ability, or background.

    ·      We’ve already secured basic tools and volunteer support. Now, with your vote and the funding, we can bring the greenhouses back to life, get seeds in the ground, and deliver a full year of gardening workshops and community growing activities.

    ·      Every vote helps us grow something special, for people, for the planet, and for Edinburgh. Thank you!

  • Amount requested: £20,000

    Tech Donation Box Programme for Schools, Edinburgh Remakery

    At Edinburgh Remakery, we believe climate action should be hands-on, community-led, and accessible to everyone. As a circular economy social enterprise, we’re on a mission to reduce e-waste, tackle digital exclusion, and inspire people across Edinburgh to rethink how we value and use technology.

    Our Tech Donation Box Programme for Schools does just that. It brings the principles of reuse, repair and environmental care right into the heart of school communities — and gives pupils, families and staff the chance to take meaningful action together.

    We place secure donation boxes in local schools and invite people to drop off old or unused tech — laptops, tablets, and smartphones that are no longer needed but still have life left in them. Our expert team collects the devices, safely wipes all data, and gets to work repairing and refurbishing them. Some are gifted to individuals and families who don’t have access to essential digital tools, while others are sold affordably to help fund our work. If a device can’t be saved, we strip it for parts or recycle it responsibly — ensuring nothing goes to waste.

    This isn’t just about technology — it’s about community climate action. Through the programme, young people learn that reuse isn’t just good for the environment — it helps others too. And by changing how we think about technology and by embedding circular economy principles early we will create systemic change.

    The impact so far has been incredible.

    With limited resources last year, we:

    • Partnered with 20 schools across Edinburgh

    • Saved 742 devices from landfill

    • Prevented 98,700kg of CO₂ emissions — that’s the same as 210 Highland cows worth of carbon!

    At one local primary school, the response was immediate — over 40 devices donated in just three weeks. The school told us:

    “This project has had such a positive impact on our pupils and families. The team from Edinburgh Remakery helped us to teach the pupils in a fun way about e-Waste. It also got them talking about the climate and the things that they wanted to do to help.

    There is demand for it to continue:

    ““We absolutely loved being part of the Tech Donation Box Programme and would jump at the chance to be involved again. The box caused a buzz—pupils and staff keen to donate old devices, sparking brilliant conversations about climate change, e-waste, and why reuse and repair matter.” Carolyn Anstruther, Deputy Head, Sciennes Primary School.

    Funding will help:

    • Bring the project to a wider range of  schools

    • Train Digital Champions in each school — giving pupils the chance to lead the charge on tech reuse and sustainability

    • Create a fun, age-appropriate learning resource to help younger pupils understand the environmental impact of tech and the importance of taking care of what we already have

    Together, we’ll cut carbon emissions, protect local ecosystems from e-waste, and make access to tech fairer — all while bringing people together around a common goal.

    This programme gives young people the tools to tackle the climate crisis — practically, locally, and with heart. We’ll help make sustainability second nature across Edinburgh’s schools.

  • Networking Key Services (NKS)

    Amount requested: £18,500

    NKS is a health and welfare organisation in Edinburgh, since 1987, combating isolation and deprivation and empowering communities through capacity building and information and knowledge. NKS since its establishment is working towards Improve quality of life, through a common platform to give a collective voice. Climate change is one of the major aspects in the organisation's mandate since 2014.

    This project will be a big support for all sectors dealing with South Asian communities (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) for making them supportive, where ever they are working, or they are about to start working or are hired.

    The spectrum of its benefits will be obvious around all venues either individuals are sensitive for climate related issues or not, trained people will help is reducing waste.

    We believe that if the grassroot level workers, staff members will be environmentally trained, the hierarchy upwards will definitely will be able to gain all the benefits, in term of suitability through reusing, upcycling, recycling and will create a long term change to combat climate emergency.

    there are researches done that the rate of trained people are far less in the sector than its demand to combat the issues by 2030.

  • Amount requested: £19,700

    Active Inquiry was founded in 2008 by Gavin Crichton to create a Scotland based arts organisation that explored the practice of seminal 20th Century Theatre Director Augusto Boal.

    We enable people to make and use theatre as a catalyst to uncover and challenge injustice. Often the people we work with are otherwise disenfranchised or marginalised by poverty, race, disability, gender, age, ethnicity, class, circumstance and/or the intersection of these. 

    Interwoven is a project exploring how interactive theatre can help to address the climate crisis. We will create an interactive theatre play, exploring the life cycle of a cotton T-Shirt which will perform to groups across Edinburgh

    Our experience of theatre that explores climate change has often been one where it is theatrically boring and instructive to the audience. They often give messages about what an audience should do rather than trying to engage them in a dialogue about how we tackle the problem together. The climate crisis is often presented as something that is distinct from other issues in society.

    We believe that interactive theatre has the potential to engage audiences in this dialogue by enabling them to understand the climate crisis as an intersectional issue. We are particularly influenced by the book The Intersectional Environmentalist by Leah Thomas and her arguments about the need to address the climate crisis by exploring the underlying causes of injustice in our society. Interactive theatre will also enable an audience to have agency in potential change because it is all about creating a dialogue rather than an instructive monologue.

    Interwoven will be a three stage project. Stage one will involve us running workshops and inviting local community groups including those who have experienced homelessness and addiction, domestic abuse, mental health issues and chronic pain. Stage two will be a development of a play, based on the ideas raised in the workshops. Stage three will be performances of this play to local community groups in Edinburgh. We already have a good network of local community audiences in Edinburgh. We will work with ECCAN to make connections to other groups in their network for workshops and performances.

    By taking an intersectional, dialogue driven approach to exploring climate change we believe that this project will give audiences a new way of examining the problem and how to begin to tackle it. As Beth Osnes says

    ‘Employing performance can address the failure of imagination that is one of the root causes of the Climate Crisis. It can offer a healing pedagogy to dress the wounds of individuality and the consumer/dominator culture towards a human/nature/mind body unity dissolving into a Great Wide Belonging.’


  • Amount Requested: £18,984.46

    Commuter Bike Buddies and Buses (Wee Spoke Hub)

    Do you wish you could cycle to work, but don’t quite know how to get started? Or know a colleague who would try if they had a bit of support? Whoever is dreaming of that refreshing cycle commute, we will help make it happen!

    Inspired by successful programmes in other cities, the Commuter Bike Buddies and Buses (CBBBs) project will support adults across Edinburgh to commute by bike, along the way creating community activity and demonstrating public appetite for safe, living streets.

    The CBBBs project is being proposed by a young, dynamic team from the Wee Spoke Hub, a project of SHRUB Cooperative.  We are partnering with Spokes, the Lothian Cycle Campaign, and Edi.Bike.

    Our Commuter Bike Buddies and Buses (CBBBs) project will deliver two programmes to support commuters to cycle to work:

    - A buddy system for new cycle-commuters;

    - Commuter bike buses, for group-safety in traffic.

    These programmes are complementary to our existing offering of cycling training, open workshops, and volunteer training.

    Impact: 

    - Direct reductions in transport emissions;

    - Creating community activity around pro-environmental behaviour;

    - Generating wider interest in active travel.

    Further technical project details

    We take our lead from successful similar programmes (e.g., Cycle Buddies in London and the Portland City Bike Bus).  We believe the project must be a collaborative enterprise embedded in communities and organisations.

    Our participation targets over a seven-month project period are:

    - Support 30 new commuter cyclists via a buddy system, with a stretch target of 150;

    - Establish 2 weekly commuter bike buses, with a long-term ambition of 8 core routes (16 starting locations);

    - 20 additional people supported by our other services (e.g., cycle training) through the promotion of this project, with a stretch target of 100.

    Our impact targets by the end of the project are:

    - 50 people cycling more often for transport (compared to previously);

    - 30 people cycling as part of their commute at least once a week (or in ‘fair-weather’);

    - 50% of bike bus participants feeling more engaged in their community;

    - Qualitative evidence of increased bike bus participation over time due to its visibility (i.e., new participants report this);

    - Qualitative evidence of bike buses being perceived positively by the wider public (e.g., in newspaper articles).

    About us

    The Wee Spoke Hub is part of SHRUB Cooperative, empowering Edinburgh residents to connect, build support networks and learn new skills through its various projects. The Wee Spoke Hub is a cycle workshop which conducts a regular programme of training events and DIY sessions, mainly targeting underrepresented demographics in cycling: women, non-binary, and LGBTQIA+ individuals., and is a welcoming space for neurodiverse volunteers and participants. We deliver change through targeted, effective interventions. It is a popular home for volunteers looking to make a difference in a sustainability-centered organisation, and is a welcoming space for neurodiverse individuals.

    Spokes needs no introduction in Edinburgh.  Their activism for better cycling infrastructure is legendary.

    Edi.Bike publishes an informative weekly newsletter around active travel, and has become a valued reference source in Edinburgh.

  • Amount Requested: £20,000

    Rhyze Mushrooms, Grass Roots Remedies and the Edinburgh Agroecology Cooperative want to partner to develop a food preservation and seed saving hub, a long-term resource that will: 

    • Significantly reduce waste by allowing us to process excess and ‘imperfect‘ produce into shelf-stable food

    • Dramatically increase our ability to save and share seeds

    • Serve as an educational space for food and seed preservation workshops

    After building works are complete, we will host a ‘Festival of Fermentation and Seed Saving’, a community outreach event that will include food preservation and seed saving activities, samples of produce that have been grown and preserved on site, and a conversation about the ‘whys and hows’ around building a sustainable local food system.

    Our partnering organisations share land at Lauriston Farm, a 100-acre food growing, biodiversity and community space in North-West Edinburgh. We are all non-profit worker cooperatives with charitable objectives who follow agroecological principles to grow food and medicine. We facilitate a diverse range of educational opportunities from hosting workshops, offering farm tours and courses, to working with volunteers.

    Rhyze is a community mushroom farm, Edinburgh Agroecology Cooperative (EAC) manages the land, runs a market garden and works to support the community to grow their own food, and Grass Roots Remedies (GRR) is a herbal medicine project with clinics in Wester Hailes and Granton.

    This funding will allow us to transform a portacabin into a food safe processing space with air extraction, stainless steel surfaces, shelving, kitchen consumables, PPE and tools including a dehydrator, grinders and fermentation kit to carry out preservation at scale.

    The processing space will significantly increase the amount of food that we are able to make available to our community while reducing the amount of produce that goes to waste.  

    • Rhyze could reduce waste by 20% by processing excess trimmings and unsold mushrooms into powders or ferments. 

    • GRR could significantly increase the amount of herbs that they process on site, allowing them to dispense more locally grown medicines in their clinics. 

    • EAC could transform un-sold veg into pickles, ferments and other shelf-stable foods. This could divert over 4,500 portions of food from being composted every year.

    The processing space will also include seed saving equipment. Saved seed is bioregionally adapted, improving its tolerance to local conditions and climatic stress making it vital to climate resilient food production.

    In 2024 EAC saved seed from 56 varieties of veg and shared hundreds of packets of seed with local community members. They worked in collaboration with growers across Scotland to develop locally adapted varieties of grains and vegetables, and in 2025 they started working with Seeds of Scotland (the only seed company in Scotland) to make local seeds more widely available.

    Improved seed saving facilities and machinery including seed drying equipment, will increase EAC’s capacity to save and distribute seed more than five-fold, significantly scaling their existing impact. Moreover, the seed processing equipment will be made available to members of the Scottish Seed Hub network, widening impact beyond Edinburgh by allowing other growers to effectively save and process their seeds.

  • Amount Requested: £14,090

    Cosy homes and connected communities

    We want to start an energy revolution where communities take back control of their resources for future generations ensuring climate resilience. Instead of leaflets and fuel vouchers communities need a seat at the table when decisions are made. As the customers and consumers of energy and heat we are the biggest stakeholder with the largest collective buying power. Nothing for us without us. This starts by being informed and letting our voices be heard.

    This collaborative project consists of two strands taking place in Craigmillar and Niddrie: 1. Home energy efficiency improvements and skills building by the Edinburgh Tool Library (ETL) Retrofixers and 2. Community empowerment and knowledge building around future heat networks by Porty Community Energy (PCE) and Craigmillar and Niddrie Matters (CAN Matters). 

    We believe that no home should be cold, and no community should be left behind. While the energy efficiency work is about what can be done now to save energy and reduce heating bills for residents, the heat network strand is about engaging with and involving the community in preparing for major structural and systemic changes to the way we heat our homes, who owns the infrastructure and who benefits (beyond having cleaner heat) over the next 10–15 years. This will require significant community understanding and input to have the best potential for community wealth building, community empowerment and long-term reduction of fuel poverty.

    Key Outcomes

    1. Mitigate Climate Change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from domestic properties, which account for 30% of UK energy use. The Retrofixers initiative will deliver 12 hands-on draught-proofing sessions,immediately cutting carbon emissions by reducing heat loss and energy consumption. The second strand promotes a systemic shift away from fossil fuels by preparing communities for the adoption of low-carbon district heat networks, which can use waste heat from sources like the Millerhill plant.

    2. Help Communities Adapt and Build Resilience by equipping residents with DIY retrofit skills, providing a practical way to adapt to rising energy costs and create warmer, cosier homes. Furthermore, by building knowledge and capacity around future heat networks, it empowers communities to navigate the upcoming energy transition, ensuring they can advocate for solutions that provide affordable and stable heat, thereby strengthening long-term resilience.

    3. Raise Awareness and Prompt Action through direct engagement and education. The Retrofixers’ home visits and skills workshops provide tangible proof of the benefits of energy efficiency. To address the knowledge gap on future heating, the project will employ a local coordinator to engage residents and organize a Heat Fair and community surveys. These demystify heat networks, gather community views, and prompt residents to take an active role in shaping their local energy infrastructure.

    4. Foster Collaborative Work by establishing a partnership between PCE, ETL and CAN Matters. The volunteer-led model for the retrofitting work promotes cooperation between trained volunteers and householders. By connecting grassroots organisations and residents, it aims to build a unified, powerful voice for a community-led approach to climate action and create a scalable blueprint for other neighbourhoods.

  • Amount Requested: £15,000

    From Vandalism to Vitality: A Secure Community Plant Nursery for Our City

    With Harbour Homes’ safe site at Wellington Place, Earth in Common can finally protect vital infrastructure, grow thousands of seedlings and help community crofts and gardens across the city thrive.

    We’re a grassroots environmental charity based at Leith Community Croft. We bring people together to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises, strengthen community resilience and transform the food system from the ground up. Guided by the Gaelic concept of dùthchas (a deep sense of belonging to the land and a duty of care for it), we create spaces where people can grow food, share skills and connect with nature and each other.

    For over a decade, our award‑winning urban croft in Leith has been a hub for sustainable food growing, environmental education and community wellbeing. We’ve run projects that exceed targets, hosted workshops for all ages and partnered with organisations across Edinburgh. But one challenge has repeatedly held us back: vandalism. Theft, arson and other wilful damage have destroyed equipment, delayed projects and made it impossible to keep key infrastructure like greenhouses or sheds on site. This has limited our ability to grow seedlings, train people in horticulture and supply other community growers.

    Now, thanks to a generous partnership with Harbour Homes, we have a breakthrough opportunity. They’ve offered us a sizeable ‘meanwhile’ site at Wellington Place in Leith, and are investing £30,000 in security fencing. For the first time, we’ll have a safe space.

    With Greenlight funding, we’ll equip the site with greenhouses, sheds and raised beds, alongside the tools, seeds and compost needed to get growing. This will become a dedicated community plant nursery: a game‑changer for Edinburgh’s sustainable food network.

    From this secure base, we’ll:

    - Supply vegetable and wildflower seedlings to the community‑led urban crofts we facilitate (Leith, Trinity, Corstorphine).

    - Provide seedlings to other growing projects and ECCAN members across Edinburgh, boosting local food production and biodiversity.

    - Grow microgreens for our café/farm shop and potentially other local outlets, improving access to fresh, nutritious food.

    - Host workshops, volunteering days and team‑building sessions for local people, schools and organisations.

    - Offer skills training in food growing, nature-friendly planting, etc.

    The benefits will ripple far beyond Leith. More seedlings mean more productive gardens, allotments and crofts across the city. More training means more people with the skills and confidence to take climate action. And more secure infrastructure means we can plan for the long term, without the constant fear of losing what we’ve built.

    By voting for Earth in Common, you’re backing a proven, community‑led organisation with a track record of delivering real change. You’re helping turn a history of setbacks into a future of growth: for people, for communities and for nature.

  • Amount Requested: £19,810

    Edinburgh Schools Net Zero Building Detectives

    Who We Are?

    Clean Heat Edinburgh Forum is a community-led charity dedicated to accelerating Edinburgh's transition to clean, affordable heating.  We've successfully engaged with 150 residents in North Edinburgh on community heat planning and delivered projects in 20 primary schools reaching 950+ people across Edinburgh, including air quality education with 96% teacher satisfaction.

    What We'll Do?

    We're creating Edinburgh's first primary school programme focussing on net-zero challenges in the built environment.  

    Over eight months, 600 Primary 6 and 7 pupils across 5 Edinburgh schools will become "Built Environment Net Zero Detectives", using low-cost portable monitoring equipment to understand how buildings are heated and how this connects to air pollution.

    The Innovation: Two hands-on lesson plan themes make net-zero concepts tangible:

    Theme 1: "How We Heat Our Homes & Schools" - Pupils explore different heating systems from gas boilers to heat pumps to heat networks, understanding how each connects to Edinburgh's net-zero targets. Many will encounter heat networks for the first time - crucial technology for our city's decarbonisation.

    Theme 2: "Air Quality Inside & Out" - Using low-cost portable sensors, pupils measure indoor temperature, humidity, and PM2.5 particles, comparing findings with outdoor air quality data to discover how heating choices affect both indoor comfort and outdoor pollution.

    The Partnership: The University of Edinburgh calibrates sensors and supports data analysis, while the City of Edinburgh Council integrates findings into heat planning. Children's discoveries inform real policy decisions about decarbonising Edinburgh's buildings.

    Who Benefits?

    - 600 pupils gain practical understanding of net-zero challenges, moving from confusion about climate policy to clear knowledge of heating solutions and air quality connections.

    - 20 teachers receive Scotland's first built environment net-zero curriculum, with lesson plans remaining available nationwide for ongoing use.

    - 300+ families learn about upcoming changes to Edinburgh's heating landscape, including heat networks and building decarbonisation affecting their neighbourhoods.

    Why This Matters?

    Edinburgh must transition 200,000+ homes from gas heating to clean alternatives by 2030. Success requires communities who understand both the challenge and the solutions available - heat networks, heat pumps, improved building performance.

    Current education rarely connects daily experiences (warm classrooms, air quality) with big climate policies. Our pupils discover these connections firsthand, measuring real differences between heating systems while learning about technologies that will transform their city.

    Expected Outcomes

    - 75% of pupils achieve expert understanding of building heating and air quality connections

    - 600+ measurements comparing indoor/outdoor air quality across different heating systems

    - Pupils gain awareness of heat networks and decarbonisation plans affecting their areas

    The Legacy

    This project builds lasting understanding: pupils who comprehend net-zero challenges, teachers confident in built environment education, families prepared for heating transitions, and replicable resources for national use.

    £19,810 leverages £20,000 in partner contributions, creating £39,810 total impact for Edinburgh's net-zero future.

Projects to choose from: Category B: £5,001 - £10,000

  • Amount requested: £10,000

    Hello! We are ELoT- the Edinburgh Library of Things! We are here to offer a seamless, gorgeous, smooth as butter transition out of the endless destructive cycle of consumer capitalism (ew) and into circular sharing economy. If you’ve ever wanted to make ice cream while admiring the paddle board you’re going to take out for a spin later, we’ve got you. If you’re just plain sick of wondering where to buy something that doesn’t require Simone Biles level mental gymnastics to get around the guilt of participating in extractive production practices, we’ve got you! If you simply lack the closet space for a carpet cleaner and camping gear, but desperately desire clean carpets and the occasional outdoor living experience, (say it with me), we’ve got you!

    We hope each and every one of us can benefit from sharing not only our things, but also our knowledge. We will be hosting workshops, repair events, creative upcycle events, swaps and more! As a CIC, we aim to invest any profits above our costs back into the business and the community- hoping to engage in clean, decentralized energy, rewilding, green space development and care supporting initiatives among other things. As much as the success of ELoT means to us personally, we hope it means more to the city and all its inhabitants. We truly believe people are ready for a shift away from capitalism and barreling towards a dead earth future, and we want to be the ones to give them the options they need to opt out of endless extraction, overproduction, and pollution cycles. The end is not inevitable and we want to be right there on the front line of this crucial fight, keeping waste out of landfills and increasing everyone’s access to cool, fun and practical items at the same time.

  • Amount requested: £10,000

    2050 Climate Group is a youth- and volunteer-led charity empowering young people (ages 18–35) from diverse communities across Scotland to take action on climate change.

    Young people are at the forefront of the climate emergency but often lack the tools, spaces and support to turn concern into action. A Lancet survey found 59 % of 16–25 year-olds feel very or extremely worried about climate change, with over 45 % reporting negative impacts on their daily lives. Many experience eco-anxiety yet have few opportunities to develop leadership skills, find community support and take action, especially those facing poverty, discrimination or geographic isolation. We believe empowering youth voices is essential to driving Scotland’s climate response

    Through our work, we aim to equip young people with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become climate leaders, and we work to foster new connections, career opportunities, and improved mental health. Our programmes are designed to be fully accessible, with an aim of engaging diverse audiences, supported by our Participation Fund to cover access costs. Over the last 10 years, are work has engaged thousands of young people across Scotland, including over 800 who have completed our climate leadership programmes. Many of our alumni have progressed into sustainability careers, led community-based projects, and influenced policy at local and national level.

    We are fundraising for our 2025/26 Climate Action Leadership Programme, which empowers up to 110 young people (aged 18–35) from all backgrounds across Scotland to build community, develop leadership skills, and fight the climate emergency for a fairer future. The urgency of the climate crisis requires diverse leadership and informed action to create meaningful change. Young people in Scotland are eager to contribute but often lack the space & support to do so, especially in rural and marginalised communities where financial and geographical barriers, limited access to opportunities, and a lack of community can make climate leadership feel out of reach. We are dedicated to breaking down these barriers, through our free annual leadership programme, CALP. We believe the solution lies in empowering the next generation of leaders to play a key role in addressing the climate emergency in Scotland and beyond.

    Every year, 2050 Climate Group invites over 110 young people from diverse backgrounds to take part in a free & accessible six-month programme of online and in-person activities, field trips, and action projects, providing them with the community support, skills, and confidence needed to drive change.

    We aim to:

    • Empower, enable and raise aspirations: We help participants deliver climate action projects, run campaigns and launch community initiatives that advance climate goals.

    • Protect the Environment: We foster  new solutions to the climate crisis, supporting participants in researching challenges and co-creating action groups. delivering conservation projects in their own communities.

    • Increase Diversity:  CALP is entirely free, ensuring people who face financial or geographic barriers can join. In our 2024 pilot, 82 % of participants came from under-represented groups.

    • Build Community & Wellbeing: We embed safer spaces throughout the programme, offering eco-anxiety workshops, support circles and ongoing network events, to help participants process emotions and forge lasting connections.

  • Amount requested - £7,123.20

    We all need to respond to climate change, grow more food locally, protect our green spaces, increase our sustainability and be more environmentally conscious, and we believe this can be achieved more successfully if the projects undertaken are fun and laughter, incorporating play, music and other art forms. The Acorn Academy is a new initiative to inspire, educate and entertain primary school aged children and their carers about nature whilst being outside it, learning about it, looking after it, growing in it, eating off it, having fun in it.

    We believe that we need to prioritise working with the up-and-coming generations as they have a freedom of thought about the climate crisis and are not ideologically gridlocked the way that certain members of the population are. Young malleable minds are more receptive to new ways of thinking and need some hope for their futures. This project, with a focus on fun, music, laughter and celebration, offers them this hope.

    Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre is the lead community anchor organisation in Drylaw and Telford and have been around for 30 years.  As well as operating a purpose built community centre, we maintain a particularly beautiful organic garden space, awarded Outstanding by Keep Scotland Beautiful 2024, in which we grow a mix or flora, including fruit and vegetables which we give away to the community, We have also been running a project called Drylaw Good Apples where we have been restoring two local community orchards. 

    We want to use all these nature-based assets to run a 20-week nature-based afterschool club which we are calling The Acorn Academy. This will run from September 2025 until March 2026.

    We intend to use the gardens and orchards to enable young people and their parents and carers to spend time outside together having fun, being in nature and learning about it. We will focus on learning about nature, growing and eating food, from seed to plate, using nature to make dyes and inks and creating art with them. We want to host musical events in these spaces to celebrate them in a funky, musical and joyous way.

    This project is going to be run through the winter months, and we will, therefore, face typical Scottish weather for the months of the project and so having access to Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre and all its facilities means we will always be able to have an activity regardless of what the winter weather will throw at us.

    By involving both children and their families and carers we can create spaces of fun, mutual learning, whilst inspiring families to get their hands dirty and work in nature in a way that is both about developing knowledge and skills whilst being recreational.

    We want people to love the nature where they live and to respect it and care for it. We can do this by encouraging people to be aware of the flora and fauna which live here. Together we will learn to identify plants and animals, build sustainable habitats for them and encourage diversity of wildlife. Although this project may only be for a couple of terms it will energise participants to be more active in their own gardens and other local green spaces.

    Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre are experienced at running such projects, and we are well connected to other local organisations such as Lauriston Agroecology Farm. As the lead community anchor, we have a large membership and a pool of dedicated volunteers committed to supporting our work and making a difference in our community.

  • Amount requested: £10,000

    The Calders is a council estate in the south west of Edinburgh it is a relatively disadvantaged community (10-20% SIMD). Wester Hailes Growing Communities (WHGC) operates a community garden in the estate called 'Calders Green Shoots' which provides growing spaces for fifty residents. We also deliver a weekly school farm project at the local primary school. We have recently replaced the community shed at the Green Shoots garden to improve it's capacity for meetings/workshops etc, and will soon be installing solar panels on the shed to provide lighting and a fridge etc.

    Over the past couple of years, WHGC has provided support to residents of the Calders to create a new SCIO, Calders Regeneration Trust, to take forward the renovation of the janitors house of Sighthill Primary (in the Calders), to create a small community centre. Despite being an estate of approx 1,200 households, the Calders has very poor community facilities. Unfortunately, the progress of this project has been slow and has now ground to a halt due to the low capacity of the community to drive it forward.

    The Future Calders project will seek to pump prime community action by commissioning a community participative design and development exercise to examine ways in which the community can come together to discuss what they need and how to organise to achieve it. In particular the exercise will explore issues such as climate adaptation, community facilities (janitors house & Edinburgh Tool Library type community workshop), community food growing, and nature restoration.

  • Amount Requested: £9,997.50

    Youth STEM Changemakers: Edinburgh Climate Action is an inclusive and impactful programme for 16-24 year olds who live/work/study in City of Edinburgh and want to use STEM to create a just and sustainable future.  Through a series of 5 full day workshops, young people will learn about sustainability, develop key leadership, green and personal skills, and be empowered with the tools and resources to start their own STEM-based projects which tackle local sustainability issues.

    This programme is designed for (and with!) youth from communities most impacted by climate change (e.g. people of colour, disabled youth, girls/young women, low income youth, LGBTQ+ youth, etc), and we’ll select 10-12 young people based on their passion for a sustainability issue, and their ambition & commitment for starting a local climate action project.

    Youth STEM Changemakers will include 5 full day workshops, covering topics like climate justice, systems thinking, community-led action, project management and storytelling, ultimately enabling participants to start their own community climate action projects.  Participants will choose which local climate issues they work on, but projects might include creating localised climate education resources, an app to empower local climate action, starting a community garden, or a social enterprise enabling reuse.

    The programme will finish with a Celebration Event attended by local community members and decision makers, so youth leaders can have a bigger influence on local climate action and policy.

    We’ll spend the money on making sure the young people have safe, accessible spaces to meet, are supported by a team of experienced staff and freelancers, and ensuring that this opportunity is accessible to all participants by providing travel expenses, lunch, a quiet room at workshops and any specific accessibility support needed (e.g. BSL interpreter, support worker).

    Watch a video from one of our previous Youth STEM Changemakers programmes ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/p/C2FJbiUujbC/

    Who are we?

    We’re Youth STEM 2030, a youth-led social enterprise empowering youth globally as STEM changemakers to create a just and sustainable future.  Over 2,500 marginalised youth in 80 countries have been impacted by our inclusive and empowering programmes, which young people describe as “sensational” and “one of the best things I’ve ever taken part in”.  Through our consultancy, training and speaking services, we’re also embedding youth voices in STEM, climate and impact-driven organisations.

    Outcomes

    Through this project, we’ll achieve the following outcomes:

    • Empowering Young People: 10-12 diverse youth are leading local climate projects, empowered and equipped with the key skills, tools and networks to increase their impact, and experience lower levels of climate anxiety.

    • Local Climate Action Projects: The projects young people develop will directly advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals within the City of Edinburgh.  It is conservatively estimated that 500 local people could be positively impacted by participant projects.

    • A Diverse Climate Sector: Through the upskilling and leadership of participants who are from marginalised backgrounds, the climate/sustainability sector locally will benefit from a more diverse talent pipeline.

    Ultimately, through using STEM to tackle real sustainability problems, this project creates a meaningful and lasting impact, both for the young people and Edinburgh’s local community and environment.

  • Amount requested: £9,800

    This project is the creation of a long-term and biodiverse community garden serving all of Oxgangs.

    Oxgangs Community Gardeners is a group of green-fingered and committed local residents, who came together to improve their local environment, foster community spirit, and bring greater pride and opportunities to the Oxgangs area of Edinburgh.

    We have been working with a community gardener and Edible Estates for the last two years to create a flourishing micro community garden from an overgrown grassy area nearby. Through this experience, we now have much bigger ambitions for change. This year, we secured an agreement with Edinburgh Council to take over the currently vacant and derelict Bowling Green at Colinton Mains Park. Over the next few years, we are going to work closely with local schools and community organisations to transform this into a vibrant and actively used community garden, producing and sharing fresh produce and harvesting fruit from the perimeter orchard we will be planting.

    Our work will be phased and strategic, initially building a pop-up community garden for local people to enjoy, but with a long-term vision extending beyond this. This project represents more than just a garden – it is an opportunity to create a social infrastructure that connects different community groups, provides educational opportunities, and transforms an under-utilised space into a community asset. The ultimate goal is a self-sustaining community garden that serves as a focal point for local engagement, learning, and collective growth.

    The project addresses specific local challenges, including low school attendance, underemployment and skills development, a lack of community and greenspaces, and difficulties with anti-social behaviour in the greenspaces that do currently exist. This new community garden and hub aims to create a sustainable, supportive community resource, led by residents and putting the power to tackle food poverty and the climate emergency back into the hands of local community.

  • Amount Requested: £9,775

    The Edinburgh Tool Library is seeking funding to continue developing our Volunteer Assembly programme – a unique initiative where we partner with community organisations across the city to bring together ETL volunteers and local residents to collaborate, learn, and create lasting change.

    Over the course of a weekend build, we work side by side to deliver projects that meet a community’s own priorities. These might include building outdoor furniture and planters, constructing a small structure, repairing or refurbishing existing facilities, or transforming an underused space. Past projects have ranged from installing water features in a care facility, to rebuilding a burnt-out pirate ship, to crafting a coffee bar for a community café.

    The programme offers meaningful, enjoyable volunteering opportunities that deliver tangible benefits identified by the community itself. The community brings the vision; ETL brings the tools, skills, and volunteer energy to make it happen.

    In the long term, we hope each build sparks new ideas, inspires more local changemakers, and encourages people to take forward further projects of their own.

    So as well as asking for your vote, we’re asking for your imagination. What change would you like to see in your community, and in the organisations that matter to you? If you can picture it, the ETL Volunteer Assembly can help make it real.

  • Amount Requested: £10,000

    Nourish & Flourish, our proposed project, is a community-led initiative developed by Mwamba staff, volunteers and our wider community of participants. It is designed to engage ethnic minority women and families in Edinburgh in climate-conscious living. Through two interconnected streams—awareness raising and food waste reduction—the project will foster environmental stewardship, build social cohesion, and empower participants to become climate champions within their communities. 

    Project Streams 

    1. Climate Awareness Conversation Café 

    2. Creative Kitchen: Culture & Cuisine Zero Waste Food Course 

    Mwamba is a community of Black African women in Edinburgh and the Lothians who migrated to Scotland. We have come together as a community to support migrant women and raise our voices for change. Mwamba provides community and trauma-informed support to any woman with migration experience in Edinburgh and the Lothians. Our goal is to create meaningful, lasting change in the lives of our community members and in the systems that oppress us. That can range from helping our community set up small businesses, set up walking groups, and rising awareness for system change.

  • Amount Requested: £10,000

    Please support Starcatchers to work with parents and their young children to create a community recipe book, working in collaboration with Wester Hailes Growing Communities and WHALE Arts.  

     Starcatchers is Scotland’s Arts and Early Years organisation. Our flagship community programme Expecting Something takes place at WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes every Thursday for parents and babies from pre-birth to age 2, primarily in the WHALE Arts garden. The Expecting Something programme uses arts and creativity to strengthen the parent-child bond, nurture well-being, and help children develop a sense of agency and independence. After each session, families enjoy a healthy lunch together, prepared inhouse at WHALE Arts utilising their garden’s produce. 

    We are seeking funding to help us to create a community recipe book that celebrates favourite dishes from our sessions, along with contributions from families. The dishes will be vegetarian and created with locally grown produce and suitable for parents and young children. This vibrant collection will feature healthy recipes from diverse cultures and emphasise ingredients that families can grow locally. The recipe book will also contain low-cost and accessible growing activities that parents and caregivers can do with their little ones at home. Each recipe will include a linked creative activity for little ones to engage in while their parents are cooking. These activities will be cost-free and use materials that can be found at home. The project will support babies and toddlers through holistic learning, fostering their curiosity and creativity while teaching them about the natural world.  

    We will also deliver a series of growing-focused activities developed in collaboration with Wester Hailes Growing Communities and WHALE Arts' community gardener, making full use of the on-site community garden. These sessions will aim to increase parents’ and caregivers’ awareness of, and access to, local growing opportunities, while also fostering a stronger connection to the environment. 

    Through a combination of hands-on gardening, creative activities, and climate-focused workshops, families will be supported to explore the links between community growing and climate action. The sessions will also aim to build participants’ confidence to take positive steps—both individually and collectively—in response to the climate emergency. 

    Participants will also collaborate with a graphic designer to bring the cookbook to life, gaining hands-on experience in Riso printing—an environmentally friendly and sustainable printing method. The final recipe book will be produced using WHALE Arts’ in-house Riso printer, combining creativity with climate-conscious practice. 

    Thank you in advance for your support! 

  • Amount Requested: £10,000

    Ligna Alba CIC is currently developing a Passive-solar drying kiln, with the help of a 70% Smart Grant Award from Innovate UK, which will enable communities to buy locally sourced timber and dry it to construction grade standard, suitable for building. We aim to deliver community-led projects that support economic, social and environmental regeneration, a purpose which applies to many community groups.

    The kiln will provide the missing link in the chain that will enable community groups to take control of the whole supply chain and procurement process, develop long term skills and retain money within their communities, building capacity and community wealth. This is a new circular economy delivery model that will give communities the security and confidence they need to develop a resilient, sustainable way of life, whilst addressing climate emergency and IPCC challenges. We will be testing our kilns in local sawmills over the next few months. 

    By March '26, once the trials are complete, communities and development trusts will have access to the kilns (fabricated in Scotland) and training will be established with the help from DTAS and local colleges to develop the skills required to implement the process. 

    This is a deliberately disruptive process that will strengthen and unite communities, reduce transport and import costs, reduce extraction processes and promote construction using locally sourced bio-based materials, whilst virtually eliminating waste, reducing CO2 emissions, improving forest management (reducing clearfell) and biodiversity and maximising carbon sequestration. Additional benefits will be reduced running costs and health benefits by building homes to passivhaus standard. This model is well suited to Scotland's geography and environment and we anticipate this process could be adopted in Edinburgh and beyond within the next 3-5 years. This could be a game changer for ECCAN to support now and share with other climate change communities.

    Ligna Alba CIC was set up by Gordon Duffy and Norrie MacPhail in November 2022. Both are experienced construction  professionals, determined to establish a circular economy construction model using local materials and resources for the benefit of those that need it most. Gordon is a Chartered Architect and Norrie a builder/asset manager from the social housing sector  (30+ years experience each) and are keen to give back some of the benefits of their learning. 

    Since starting this project we have realised the kiln will be suitable for drying any other bio-based products, (seaweed, hemp, or mushrooms) and hardwood for furniture and crafts people, making it potentially even more useful to community groups or their members. The kilns will be transportable, cost nothing to operate (no power requirement), are carbon negative in use and will be available for hire or purchase as required (i.e. suitable for short or long-term projects) along with remote operational capacity (4G).

    Traction achieved so far:  ’25 Grant of £10,000 from The Pebble Trust; ’24 Innovate UK Smart Grant (£300k) covering 70% of project costs; ’24 Social Enterprise EDGE Finalist; ’23 BE—ST ACCELERATE TO ZERO AWARDS, shortlisted for The Built Environment Accelerate to Zero Hero. Current project shortfall £116,000. 

  • Amount Requested: £7,571.40

    Turning donations into climate action — affordable essentials, less waste, stronger community.

    The Ripple is a community-led charity based in the Restalrig Lochend Community Hub, serving the neighbourhoods of Restalrig, Lochend and Craigentinny. Since 1996, we’ve been tackling poverty and inequality by helping people help themselves — providing services that improve quality of life, build resilience, and strengthen our community.

    Our area is in the 5% most deprived in Scotland. Many households face low incomes, high living costs, and limited access to affordable, sustainable shopping. We believe climate action should be practical, visible, and inclusive — and that it can go hand in hand with supporting those most affected by the cost-of-living crisis.

    We are seeking funding to create a Community Reuse Shop at the Hub — a welcoming space where local people can access affordable clothing, household items, and non-perishable food, all saved from landfill. The shop will:

    - Reduce waste and cut carbon emissions by repairing, reusing, and redistributing quality goods.

    - Build a circular economy locally by encouraging donations, swaps, and creative upcycling.

    - Support household budgets by offering low-cost essentials in a dignified, friendly environment.

    - Share skills and knowledge through monthly “Climate Skills” sessions on mending, repairs, and sustainable living.

    This project builds on our proven track record of delivering climate-positive initiatives such as our Refillery, Repair Cafés, community garden growing, and food dignity work. Last year, we ran 3 Repair Cafés, launched a Refillery with over 650 visits, and served 1,767 meals at our lunch club. We also involved 85 volunteers contributing over 8,298 hours across our services.

    The outcomes we will achieve are based on real evidence from our existing work:

    - Reduced waste and measurable carbon savings through goods repaired, reused, and redistributed.

    - Greater resilience for households, with access to affordable essentials and reduced financial strain.

    - Stronger community connections, with more people reporting reduced isolation and increased confidence. In our most recent survey, 92% of participants felt less isolated, 94% felt more connected to their community, and 93% reported eating more healthily.

    - Increased skills and capacity for climate action, with local people learning repair, reuse, and low-carbon living techniques they can pass on to others.

    Unfortunately, due to funding instability since November 2024, we have had to reduce our office space and scale our original Refillery down to a smaller “mini Refillery.” This new shop will allow us to maintain and expand our climate action work in a sustainable way, ensuring that practical, affordable, and environmentally-friendly solutions are available to everyone in our community.

    By voting for The Ripple’s Community Reuse Shop, you’ll be supporting a project that tackles climate change, reduces waste, and helps local people weather the cost-of-living crisis — all while creating a stronger, more resilient community.

  • Amount Requested: £10,000

    We are a community-led charity which exists for the benefit of Granton (its people, land, ecosystems, whole community). Our project will build on our existing work of hosting busy weekly community lunches at our garden. These are made from local produce, open to all and free of charge, -everyone is invited (but not obliged) to do something to contribute (whether helping grow the food, harvest and prepare it, cook and serve it, set up tables and chairs, or clear up after). In this project we will explore and experiment with new models of additional community meals including some hosted indoors in the evenings and/or at weekends (to include people who are in work/education during the daytime). We will also expand our program of practical food based workshops, (eg. apple juicing, bread baking, food preserving). Core to our work is making connections: that we can grow delicious and nutritious food on land within walking distance of where we live, that this involves understanding, appreciating, and caring for the soil and the biodiversity and health of local ecosystems. That the skills to do this are valuable and should be shared within our community, as well people being able to make a living using them. That eating regularly with people who are different to us, can help us to get to know and understand and appreciate each other more, and then it's easier to cooperate for the benefit of the community. If we can organise well as a local community around a food supply that we can produce very locally, then this will make our community far more resilient (climate adaptation), as well as reducing the need for imports which may be transported long distances, and often come from regions with acute water insecurity, exploitation of labour, and degradation of soil (reducing this is climate mitigation).  

    We will be setting up a significant new food production facility in Granton during the course of this project, so we hope that this project will help carefully design and launch a regular program of communal dining opportunities and practical food skills workshops, that will maximise the benefit to our local community much longer term.

Projects to choose from: Category C: £1,001 - £5,000

  • Amount Requested: £1,023.99

    We wish to create a food growing allotment area in the grounds of the Jewel Miners welfare charitable society, having 10 raised beds in area unused area, tended by members of the community who have no growing space themselves.

  • Amount requested: £3,740

    "Waste to Wonder" are creative upcycling workshops where lonely and isolated migrant and minority ethnic women from low income households will learn how to turn rubbish to items of practical use and learn how to take leadership in conserving the environment and reduce waste, while feeling creative and mentally positive.

  • Amount requested: £4,992

    20 young people from our Edinburgh employability programme, Impactful Starts, will work with Rangers from Heritage Environment Scotland to learn about geological and wildlife conservation, biodiversity and sustainability. Using this learning, Impact Arts’ young people will create and pilot creative arts activities using sustainable materials. These creative activities will be documented in a colourful information pack bursting with sustainable creative activities and key learning about thinking sustainably. The information packs will be shared with schools, youth groups, and nurseries in Edinburgh, and will be made available to download from a number of websites. There will be creative activity examples for use both indoors and outdoors, that use climate action and nature for inspiration and materials.

    The information pack will share key learning about thinking sustainably. This will include information on, and practical examples of:

    Material Selection:

    Choosing materials with low environmental impact, like recycled paper, reclaimed wood, natural pigments, and organic fibers. Advising on best types of bought materials e.g. Water-based paints, such as watercolors and gouache, have a lower impact than oil or acrylic paints.

    Reduce New Material Usage:

    Minimizing the amount of new materials used in a creative activity/art work will help reduce overall waste and resource consumption. This project will show how to create amazing art for low cost and with low impact on the environment.

    Recyclability and Biodegradability:

    Opting for materials that can be recycled or biodegraded at the end of their life cycle reduces landfill waste.

    Circular Economy Principles:

    The circular economy model focuses on reducing waste and maximizing the use of resources which is vital for sustainable material design.

    Outcomes:

    20 young people, not in education, employment or training will gain confidence and have improved mental health by using their skills to pilot and create a guide to sustainable creativity activities that can be used by others.  

    90 primary schools, 23 secondary schools, 102 early years centres and 15 youth groups will receive this information on thinking sustainably when being creative. Edinburgh children and young people are the next generation of artists and designers. Understanding how to create and design sustainably from a young age will foster long-lasting change. Some 80% of the environmental impacts of a product are locked in at the design phase. Additionally, we are all consumers, and the learning from the information packs can also be used to make more informed consumer choices.

    An even wider reach of the information will be made possible by promoting and sharing ‘Sustainable Creative Activities in Greenspaces’ through the Impact Arts website, as well as through the Rangers at Holyrood Park.

  • Amount requested: £1,035

    Burdiehouse Burn Valley Park is a linear park stretching for two miles through south Edinburgh. One of seven Local Nature Reserves in Edinburgh, the park covers 28 acres in the South East of Edinburgh. It includes large stretches running through the most deprived 20% of SIMD datazones ( Gracemount, Burdiehouse, Southouse, Hyvots and Gilmerton) and also smaller stretches in less deprived areas (Gilmerton South, the Murrays, Liberton East). This makes investment into community activities in the Park of particular importance in bridging cultural and social divides.

    The Friends of Burdiehouse Burn Valley Park group has a small and active committee, drawing upon a wider circle of volunteers for its various activities. All committee members are drawn from the local community within walking distance of the Park. The main focus is our regular activity morning the second Saturday of each month. These sessions carry out tasks such as woodland management that makes the Park more accessible, installing woodland play improvements, campaigning on dog mess, litter picking, graffiti clean ups, willow weaving in the burn to protect existing paths from erosion, cutting back Japanese knotweed, nature walks, installing bird and bat boxes and other tasks that improve biodiversity. Over the years the Friends have fundraised and added tools and equipment to carry out its voluntary work, ensuring an inclusive approach. We have an active profile on social media with a regular newsletter.

    The Friends' key aims are:

    (1) The advancement of community development (including the advancement of urban regeneration) within the Community

    (2) The maintenance and growth of wildlife and plant life, including the supporting environment and infrastructure within the boundaries of the local nature reserve

    (3) To promote and encourage the enjoyment of the Park by local community and general public.


  • Amount requested: £5,000

    Putting Climate Awareness into a Local Place Plan - an Application for ECCAN‌ Greenlight Funding 2025

    Bruntsfield Area Net Zero Action Initiative (BANZAI) is a grassroots community group - neighbours who take practical, local action on the climate and nature emergency.  

    We support individuals and communities in moving towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient future - building hope and connection along the way.

    We seek £5,000 to kick-start a Climate-Informed Local Place Plan for South and South West Central Edinburgh.  This will be by inclusive, community-led deliberative democratic processes and contribute directly to the City of Edinburgh Council’s City Plan 2040.  

    We want our neighbourhoods to be ready for a changing climate - whether that’s through adapting homes for cleaner heating, managing flood risk, or improving local green spaces.

    What’s a Local Place Plan?

    Local Place Plans are part of Scottish planning legislation giving communities a say in how land is used in their area.  These plans influence the city’s future development and are a vital opportunity to make climate and community voices heard.  Our plan will focus on integrating climate resilience, equity, and local needs into the heart of planning decisions.

    Who’s involved?

    BANZAI is acting as the catalyst and secretariat for this project, but the work will be co-designed with the wider community in an area of many pre-1919 tenements and terraced houses in South and South West Central Edinburgh.  

    We are already working with community councils (Merchiston, Tollcross, Morningside and Marchmont & Sciennes), local schools, a housing co-op, and environmental groups like the Friends of the Meadows and Fountainbridge Canalside Community Trust. 

    We’ll also partner with groups focused on relevant matters such as food systems, biodiversity, clean heat, and sustainable transport.

    What will the project do?

    We’ll run a 6-month public engagement programme (Sept 2025 - March 2026), using People’s Assemblies - a participatory model of democracy where all voices are heard:

    • Forming a working group with local stakeholders

    • Running online surveys and local publicity campaigns

    • 3 community assemblies to gather input, develop ideas, and validate proposals

    • Producing a community-led report feeding into a Local Place Plan in time for the city’s summer 2026 deadline.

    Our focus is South Central Edinburgh - including Bruntsfield, Tollcross, Merchiston, Marchmont & Sciennes, and Morningside. These areas share a similar heritage of pre-1919 tenement housing, busy local high streets, and strong community identities. The plan’s geographic reach will evolve as we consult with local people.

    What outcomes will we achieve?

    • A strong, community-informed vision for a greener, fairer, more resilient local area

    • New collaborations across neighbourhoods and sectors

    • A clear, accessible planning document shaped by local voices

    • A replicable model for other Edinburgh communities

    • Better engagement with CEC Net Zero 2030 and Heat & Energy Strategy targets.

    We believe change starts on our doorstep.  This project empowers residents to shape decisions affecting where we live - building a connected, prepared and hopeful Edinburgh.  

    By voting for us, you’re voting for a community-led response to the climate emergency, rooted in inclusion, resilience, and action.

    NB:  View our full application with draft timelines and budget at https://bit.ly/banzaibid.

  • Amount requested: £1,137.99

    We are Extinction Rebellion Edinburgh & the Lothians and we take bold and creative non-violent direct action to raise awareness of the changes which must happen in order to counter the immense injustice of the climate and nature crisis. We rely on art and creativity to get our message across and our activities include making costumes and props, designing banners and placards, block printing and 'discobedience' dancing. All the work is done voluntarily but we are asking for a grant to pay for art materials, printing costs and occasional room hire. We also need to replace the gazebo which got damaged during this year's (very windy) Edinburgh Climate Festival and buy a sturdy table to display our leaflets and our bloc printing material - this includes replacing the inks that we used printing dozens of T shirts - it was a popular activity for adults and children. Maybe you were there and created your own T shirt design!

    Other events besides the Climate Festival included a Pensions Conference at the EICC where we created an art installation - a man with his head in the sand - and danced to the tune of "Big Oil Funk". We designed posters and leaflets for a demonstration outside the Aberdeen Investments and Nat West Bank AGMs in Edinburgh, and we included the famous "Red Rebels" at a Mothers Rebellion event in Holyrood Park. We were supported by Green Party MSPs outside Holyrood when we held up banners with huge ears drawn on, exhorting MSP not to listen to lobbyists, there was also some chanting and singing.

    At and between events we encourage participation from people in all walks of life. We have a core of committed activists and supporters in our Edinburgh group but we are always looking to for more people to support our activities. Our message is serious and we must hold governments and corporations to account for their failure to take action to mitigate the approaching climate chaos, but we do it in a fun and colourful way that makes more of an impact that just a protest with banners. Also because XRE&L is quite a small group of committed activists we often join with other groups to highlight the multiple crises of climate, the failure of fossil fuel corporations and banks to act, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution etc - these groups include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Edinburgh Climate Coalition, Banzai, Mothers Rebellion and Parents for the Future to name but a few.

    We have regular meeting and issue newsletters to everyone on our extensive mailing list and, in the long term, we aim to build enthusiasm and momentum for holding the government and corporations in Edinburgh and Scotland to account. In the short term, we plan events and non-violent direct actions to shine a spotlight on perpetrators and facilitators of climate breakdown and the staggering injustice of this crisis both locally and globally

    Please support our very modest bid for funding from ECCAN and we hope to see you soon at the next climate action. Together we CAN make a difference and we will demand the changes needed to save our world.

  • Amount Requested: £5,000

    This fund will support Folk Folly, the 4th edition of our folkloric arts festival in Leith. It will once again bring the community together through performances, workshops, a procession, an art exhibition and a film festival. The events are open to everyone and anyone - whether through artwork submissions or by coming along in folkloric fancy dress for the procession. Adults and children (and dogs!) welcome.

    Our core aim is to empower the Leith community to reconnect with their community and the natural world through folklore and creative/artistic storytelling. This approach tackles the sense of hopelessness around climate change by encouraging local, individual and community action and fostering hope through collective creativity. Through these community networks, we hope to provide a hopeful and creative space for people to develop their own climate action processes.

    The festival begins with workshops in September. Through these workshops, participants will learn to create with natural and reused materials, a process that sparks a deeper connection to the natural world and a collective drive for change. The celebratory procession, performances and art opening will be on the first Saturday of October, followed by a two week art exhibition that culminates in a film festival. All of this will encourage a new understanding of nature through folkloric artwork and storytelling. Based on feedback from previous years’ editions, our audience loves the festival's open and inclusive spirit, its focus on folklore and the joyful sense of togetherness – particularly during the procession – that defines the event.

    Folkloric Theme: We believe that folklore can raise awareness of and, in turn, build resilience to climate change. Folklore is rooted in nature and explores the relationship humans have with the earth and the creatures we share it with. Climate researchers now widely agree that these stories can influence our attitudes and provide a framework for dealing with modern environmental problems. Our goal is to draw on this knowledge and use these narratives to build a stronger connection to the environment. This approach feels particularly important in an urban setting, where people may feel disconnected from nature – we provide an opportunity to reconnect, take local action and build a more resilient and climate-aware community.

  • Amount Requested: £1,183

    We're on a mission to make our park a biodiverse haven for wildlife and plant more trees! Meadowfield Park is on the side of Arthur's Seat, just out with the boundary of Holyrood Park. There are some patches of woodland, a large sloped area of grass traditionally mown short, and a temporary pond which takes in water from Holyrood Park. There are fantastic views over the Forth to Fife and East Lothian. We've been planting trees and working with the council to protect some areas for biodiversity. Unfortunately, trees that local kids planted last year have just lost their protective stakes after some vandalism and we need your help to replace them and to plant some more. In a project with local school children, we all want to learn about the bug life of the park and make some bug hotels, which will help local families understand why leaving strategic areas of the park to nature and not mowing the grass everywhere is important for biodiversity. We're also going to plant insect-friendly bulbs to come up in the spring and summer. This ECCAN funding would empower more local volunteers to join us and continue our work in helping to protect and nurture this space as it transforms into a wilder area, which is better for wildlife and people, less prone to flooding and which embodies more carbon. 

  • Amount requested: £4,100

    My name is Elaine from Go Deep Scotland and I am not only inviting you to vote for our project but also to join us in the Go deep game and activities that we will use the funding to offer.

    If we receive funding it will take place in autumn in Edinburgh around the theme of climate change and climate justice.

    We want to invite all voices especially those of us who are not often included - those of us who are new to Edinburgh, those of us with disabilities, those of us who have lived in other countries, those of us who feel left out of the community where we live or feel that we don't belong in conversations about the climate. We believe we all have desire for change, for a better future and for climate justice. Unless all of our voices are heard we will miss out on talents, wisdom, ideas, passion and more .We need tall of it to help change happen. So EVERYONE is warmly invited to come along. Come for a morning, an hour, a day, a coffee and you will always be welcome.

    We will run an open, fun few days of activity. It is enjoyable and challenging. There are no presentations, PowerPoints or speeches.

    We will learn about ourselves - what we are good at and what challenges us. We learn about each other - what we share and our differences. We learn about our community -what it can offer and what it needs. we make new connections across our differences and have deeper conversations about difficult topics. The worst that can happen is you have some fun, feel better about yourself and meet some new people and ideas.

    Go Deep Scotland will facilitate the games in a light and safe way that ensures we all get to feel better about ourselves and are able to take steps towards climate justice and practical actions alongside others in our community. Find out more on our website www.godeepscotland.co.uk or see info https://nescan.org/the-jtcp-just-transition/ of some of our work with NESCAN or in tools for deliberative democracy published by Aberdeen University. https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2164/25500/DS_May2025_Just_Transition_Lab_Report_-_Toolkit_for_Deliberative_Democracy_2_.pdf;jsessionid=BAD09735D556B47CCA32058339E926E8?sequence=1

  • Amount requested: £4,205

    The Sorted Project provides a unique service in Edinburgh supporting people with complex health needs relating to substance use and mental health. We operate our service from two canal boats on the union canal, which provide safe and peaceful spaces for training, learning to sail and take care of the boats, volunteering and developing healthy social networks. Lived experience is at the centre of our organisation and the people we support help to develop the work of The Sorted Project. This demonstrates our commitment to an inclusive approach along with highlighting equality and diversity in our organisation.

    Through this fund we aim to bring our boats into the 21st century and use sustainable fuel instead of diesel. We will mitigate climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce environmental impact by replacing mineral diesel to operate our canal boats with a sustainable fuel called HVO, Hydro Treated Vegetable Oil. This will make a great contribution to the climate emergency. In addition, we will support and encourage collaborative working across groups of boaters, canal organisations and our wider communities to encourage sustainability through using this recycled organic fuel. We have strong partnerships across our inland waterways, and we link with organisations such as Scottish Canals, Lowland Canals Association and Scottish Waterways for All. This provides us with a wide reach to influence other organisations to adopt this way of operating their boats. 

    Should you support this work, you will enable the first boating organisation in Scotland to make the switch to HVO. In doing so, this will create the next wave of boaters and organisations to start using HVO. This will be the ripple effect we need on our canal network. 

    We know that when there is urgency for change, it can often take just one organisation to provide a model that works. A model that instantly reduces carbon emissions, that makes a sustainable impact not only on their work, but on their local environment and communities. Let us be that organisation. Let us influence and encourage others. 

    This is now a tried and tested product and is a drop-in replacement for traditional fossil fuel diesel. HVO can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates showing up to a 90% reduction compared to fossil diesel. It also reduces other emissions like nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter, and carbon monoxide.

    This fund will enable us to install a specialist tank on an agreed site and arrange for HVO to be delivered to that site. We can then sail our boats to the tank and fill up on HVO rather than diesel. We know that HVO costs slightly more, however, considering the cost to our planet and our climate in continuing to use fossil diesel, it is a small price to pay.

    Please help us to make this small yet significant change in how we run our charity in a much more sustainable way. Thank you. 

  • Amount requested: £3,000

    We are the Beyond COP team at UNA Scotland, a group of student and graduate volunteer interns with a keen interest in climate action and awareness. Through UNA Scotland – a civil society organisation working to promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – we launched the UNAS Earth Ambassadors initiative in September 2024, bringing together 7 climate activists from across the world: Fiji, Laos, India, Sweden, Guinea, Iran and Scotland. 

    The initiative addresses the critical need for a global, collaborative platform that overcomes geographical and socio-economic barriers. In many parts of the world, passionate climate advocates lack the resources, visibility, and opportunities to make their voices heard, especially in countries where infrastructure, media access, or political support may be limited. By bringing together these advocates and empowering them to collaborate, share knowledge, and amplify their efforts, the initiative ensures that diverse perspectives and innovative solutions from all corners of the globe are given a platform. This unified approach is vital for tackling the global nature of climate change, as it requires collective action and the inclusion of underrepresented voices who may otherwise be marginalised, thus ensuring that solutions are both equitable and effective. 

    In order to share this with local communities in Scotland, we decided to organise a one-week project in September, in which the Ambassadors would travel to Edinburgh to engage with local schools, community organisations, and Parliamentarians. Through school workshops, Model United Nations, a roundtable at Parliament, conversations with climate NGOs and public events, the project will inspire community-based climate action and strengthen Scotland’s commitment to global citizenship and sustainability. 

    Furthermore, the project will build an understanding of climate issues among young people, strengthen community networks for action, inspire youth-led initiatives, and foster partnerships between schools, parliamentarians, and global climate advocates. By investing in youth and future generations, we not only aim to empower young people to take meaningful action but also encourage sustainable solutions. The project therefore prioritises inclusive participation and creates opportunities for youth to translate their ideas into action.

    By sharing their own activities on climate and how it has affected their local communities, the Ambassadors will contribute to a much-needed dialogue on climate action and how individuals, communities and governments can work together to drive meaningful change. By the end of the week, we will have interacted with as many individuals and groups as possible, with the hope that they will engage with, build on, or create their own initiative. We recognise that the fight against climate change is a collaborative effort and have shaped the week’s events with this at the forefront. 

    Overall, there is a need for practical, inspiring opportunities to engage with climate action at a local level. By bringing perspectives from climate-affected regions into Scottish communities, this project builds solidarity, knowledge, and awareness. It contributes meaningfully to Scotland’s progress on education, sustainability, and community engagement, responding directly to Scotland’s climate ambitions and strengthening resilience and community empowerment at a time of growing global and local challenges.

  • Amount requested: £3,468

    Strengthening Communities for Race Equality – Scotland (SCOREscotland) is based in South West Edinburgh. The neighbourhoods we operate in fall within the lowest 10% of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). The majority of our service users are migrants or refugees who face many barriers to integration including racism, low income, and isolation. They often live in poor quality housing alongside hostile neighbours. These experiences lead to very low levels of self-confidence and isolation. Their ongoing health/mental health problems are often undiagnosed or poorly managed and they struggle with complex family issues including harmful cultural practices.

    Our project will raise awareness about climate change, reduce social isolation, build skills and improve health and wellbeing of up to 40 local minority ethnic (ME) men by delivering the following new activities over a period of six months:

    • Cooking and community meals: Run up to 24 sustainablecookingsessions and community meals including healthy eating information sharing and wellbeing workshops.

    • Food Growing: Run up to 24 food growing sessions utilizing our newly acquired nearby allotment as a demonstration garden including intergenerational gardening activities and climate change awareness raising workshops.

    Outcomes

    1. Build the skills of groups and communities

    The project will equip up to 40 local minority ethnic (ME) men with practical skills in sustainable cooking, healthy eating, and food growing. The cooking sessions will develop participants' cooking confidence, food preparation skills, and knowledge about nutritious, low-cost, and eco-friendly meals. The food growing sessions will teach gardening techniques, seasonal planting, composting, and sustainable food production, creating long-term self-sufficiency skills. By involving participants in hands-on learning and intergenerational activities, the project will foster peer learning, teamwork, and a stronger sense of community ownership and resilience.

    2. Encourage Climate Action

    Through practical activities, the project will raise awareness of the environmental impact of food choices and promote sustainable lifestyles. Participants will learn how to reduce food waste, cook with seasonal and locally grown produce, and grow their own food using eco-friendly methods. The allotment will serve as a living example of climate-friendly practices, encouraging behavioural changes such as reducing carbon footprints through sustainable food systems. Climate change awareness workshops will help participants understand their role in mitigating climate change and inspire collective action within their families and communities.

    3. Demonstrate Equality and Diversity

    The project is specifically designed to engage minority ethnic (ME) men, a group that often faces barriers to mainstream environmental and wellbeing initiatives. By creating culturally sensitive, inclusive activities that respect and incorporate diverse culinary traditions and community knowledge, the project will ensure equal participation. Intergenerational activities will bridge gaps between younger and older participants, fostering mutual respect and learning across age groups. The community meals will celebrate diversity by sharing stories, traditions, and recipes from different cultures, promoting social inclusion, reducing isolation, and strengthening community cohesion.

  • Amount requested: £3,760

    Our aim for the Craigmillar engagement project is to enable all members of the diverse community of Craigmillar to enjoy the benefits and opportunities that the beautiful woodlands and greenspace of Craigmillar Castle Park provide. 

    Through the delivery of community events we would offer opportunities to the local community to learn new skills, engage with nature, meet other local residents and have fun. We would also work alongside local schools, organisations and community groups to build our vision of a learning community centred around the park. This projects offers us an opportunity to include the community actions inspired by this project into future programmes which insures this project a lasting legacy.  

  • Amount Requested: £5,000

    We’re excited to introduce “Growing Food at Home”, a 6-month pilot project running from September 2025 to March 2026, delivered in partnership by The Planetary Healing Centre and The Free Company. This initiative is designed to empower people facing poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination by helping them grow, harvest, and cook their own food – right from their homes.

    The project will be based in South West Edinburgh, with hands-on sessions taking place at The Free Company’s farm near Balerno, as well as at participants’ homes or nearby community spaces. To ensure full access, we’ll provide free transport from Balerno Bus Terminus to the farm site.

    Each small group of 8 to 10 people will take part in workshops that cover everything from seed sowing and composting to growing in small spaces and learning about seasonal food that grows in Scotland. These practical sessions will be led by experienced facilitators, supported by trauma-informed staff and volunteers from The Planetary Healing Centre. A dedicated support worker will help each participant create and maintain their own growing area – whether it’s a window box, balcony, or garden – and encourage them to track their learning through photos, journaling, or short videos.

    The people we aim to support may be dealing with mental ill-health, trauma, disability, long-term conditions, or caring responsibilities. Many will be referred by GPs, Link Workers, social services, or community organisations, and all sessions will be free of charge, with optional donations welcome from those who are able.

    This project is about more than growing vegetables – it’s about building climate resilience and stronger, more inclusive communities. By learning to grow food locally and organically, participants will reduce their carbon footprint, support biodiversity, and become more self-sufficient during times of rising food prices. They’ll also discover how composting, organic methods, and pollinator-friendly planting can contribute to a healthier planet.

    Participants will share their progress through creative storytelling – helping to raise awareness and inspire others in the wider community. This sharing will help spark climate action while strengthening social bonds and personal wellbeing.

    Why vote for this project?

    - Helps tackle climate change by promoting low-impact, local food production

    - Supports people hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis

    - Boosts mental health and confidence through nature and practical learning

    - Encourages community connection, inclusion, and peer support

    - Lays foundations for a longer-term programme with volunteer and leadership opportunities

    Looking ahead, we hope to build on this pilot by applying for further funding in 2026 through Growing Food Together, Thriving Green Spaces, and other sources. Our long-term aim is to scale this model and create a network of community-led food-growing spaces in South West Edinburgh.

    By voting for “Growing Food at Home,” you’re supporting a greener, fairer, and healthier future—one seed at a time.

  • Amount Requested: £5,000

    We will revamp around 15 neglected street planters and tree bases in Edinburgh with colourful, biodiversity-friendly planting schemes using permaculture principles. Small trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials and ground cover plants will provide year-round interest, using native, edible and drought-tolerant species. We will involve local communities and businesses, gathering their input and providing them with all the information and resources needed to maintain the planters and tree bases in the long term.

  • Amount requested: £5,000

    A series of hands-on upcycled furniture-building workshops for the local community. Help create a welcoming community cafe at our new permanent home for the Pianodrome in Bruntsfield, by building furniture entirely from pianos which are otherwise past their play-by date.

    We are Pianodrome Community Interest Company. We create unique, playable, community-centred sculptures made entirely from otherwise disused pianos. We have a core ethos of sustainability through reuse and upcycling. Since the project started in 2017 we have saved over 600 pianos from landfill, by either restoring and rehoming them or dismantling those which are beyond repair to create iconic sculptures such as our world famous in-the-round piano amphitheatre, the Pianodrome. We have inhabited pop up spaces in Edinburgh, Leeds, and North Carolina and we are now taking on a fantastic permanent home in the St. Oswald Centre, Bruntsfield. 

    With the help of Greenlight funding we would like to run a series of free hands-on upcycled furniture making workshops for the local community. Build Your Own Piano Cafe is an invitation to help us inhabit the space with hand made furnishings fashioned from reused pianos. Participants can join with any level of experience and will work together to create unique pieces of furniture which will be used by visitors to Pianodrome Bruntsfield.

    The Greenlight fund will allow us to prototype accessible building methods, equip us with tools, and pay workshop facilitators to devise and deliver twelve sessions of workshops for 10-15 participants in each session. The project will be located on-site at the St Oswald’s Centre, where we will set up a temporary upcycling workshop space with hand tools, piano parts and suggested designs to help participants get started. 

    This project will benefit the local community of Bruntsfield and the wider community of Edinburgh. The workshops will provide a hands-on introduction to Pianodrome, tool use, and furniture building. This series of workshops will encourage and equip people to take ownership of their new creative community space through building the furniture they will then use, fostering connections and creativity.  

    Our experiences of working with volunteers in the past have shown us that active hands-on community engagement can generate a sense of ownership within a project which can be truly transformative for those forming a nascent community. Our volunteers say they find it meaningful to be part of a team working towards a bigger project, and are eager to learn new skills. Further to this, most of our excellent staff and freelance team have come to the project first through volunteering - in this way our project continues to grow as a cohesive and integrated community-centred network, which helps to encourage creativity and cultural optimism in an otherwise increasingly fractious cultural environment.

    If we are awarded the funds we will be very excited to collaborate with our participants to create some beautiful upcycled furniture while saving lots of pianos from the scrapheap."

  • Amount Requested: £4,980

    Who We Are

    Clean Heat Edinburgh Forum is a community-led charity advocating for Edinburgh's transition to clean, affordable heating.  We've successfully engaged with 150 residents in North Edinburgh on community heat planning and delivered projects in 20 primary schools reaching 950+ people across Edinburgh, including air quality education with 96% teacher satisfaction.

    What We'll Do

    We're creating Edinburgh's first comprehensive family workshop programme on heat networks and home decarbonisation. Over six months, 100 families with pupils at five Edinburgh schools will participate in hands-on ""Family Heat Networks Discovery Workshops,"" learning together about heating transitions directly affecting their neighbourhoods.

    The Innovation: Interactive workshops where families explore Heat Network Mapping: Parents and children investigate proposed heat network routes around their homes using Council planning maps, understanding how this new technology will transform their streets.

    Flexible Impact: This project operates as a family education, using proven ""learning together"" approaches to make heat networks accessible to households across Edinburgh.

    The Partnership: The University of Edinburgh supports access to survey and data analysis, while the City of Edinburgh Council integrates findings into heat planning. Families' discoveries inform real policy decisions about decarbonising Edinburgh's buildings.

    Who Benefits

    100 families gain practical understanding of Edinburgh's heating transition, moving from confusion about policy to clear knowledge of options affecting their homes.

    200+ citizens develop confidence in heating decisions, understanding timelines, and technologies like heat networks, that many have never heard of.

    150+ children engage in meaningful climate conversations with parents, discovering solutions together.

    5 school communities strengthen connections between home and climate education, creating lasting networks of informed families.

    Why This Matters

    Edinburgh must transition 200,000+ homes from gas heating to clean alternatives by 2030. Council heat network plans will transform entire neighbourhoods, but many residents remain unaware of what's coming or how it affects them.

    Current consultation processes rarely reach busy families effectively. Our workshops meet families where they are - in schools, with formats that work for both adults and children, providing practical tools they can immediately use.

    Families leave workshops knowing: Is a heat network planned for their street? When might it arrive? What are the costs and benefits? How do they prepare? These aren't abstract policy questions, but practical decisions affecting household budgets and comfort.

    Expected Outcomes

    - 80%+ of participating families report increased understanding of heat network options

    - 60+ families request connection to ongoing community heat champion networks

    - Community feedback contributes to Council heat planning consultations

    - Replicable workshop model available for other Edinburgh areas

    The Legacy

    This project builds lasting community capacity: families prepared for heating transitions, school networks ready for ongoing climate engagement, and proven methods for making complex policy accessible to real households facing real decisions.

    £4,980 leverages £7,500 in partner contributions, creating comprehensive family engagement in Edinburgh's net-zero future.

  • Amount requested: £3,938

    Every day we hear more about how the climate emergency is negatively impacting us around the globe. The scale of the problems we are encountering feels overwhelming and our ability to stop or slow down global climate change feels insurmountable. But there is hope. There are solutions. And there is a role for us all to work together making small changes, to achieve a great positive impact.

    Our charity has managed Southside Community Centre (alongside the local authority) for nearly forty years, we’re based in the heart of our community and we’ve heard a clear message from our community that they want to do more for the planet, but need a hand to get started. And also that they want to be involved in a collective effort that everyone can get involved in whatever their circumstances. So, we’ve come up with a  project that can create connections across our community and which everyone can get involved in regardless of income, health, gender etc.

    Greener Southside is a project proposed by us that will encourage the Southside / Newington community (by community we mean those who live, work, volunteer, study or visit our area) to make a specific pledge that contributes to slowing climate change, and over the course of 2026 we’ll chart their progress and share information and advice on how to meet their pledges. We’ll bring our pledgers together to connect with one another. We’ll as them to let us know their progress mid- 2026, and at the end of 2026 we’ll ask them to reflect on their progress.

    Pledges could be to – make my garden pollinator friendly, use only reusable shopping bags, tell my family and friends about changes I am making and why, or not eat meet for two days per week.

    In the first four months of 2026 we’ll promote our pledge scheme and signed up pledgers. For the rest of the year we’ll promote the pledges made to encourage others, share stories from pledgers around how they are meeting their pledges (or not), shares news, advice and information. We’ll do this through our website, social media, newsletters (email and printed) and word of mouth.

    We’ll use the Greenlight funding to employ a worker for twenty weeks to get the project off to a prominent start and to recruit volunteers to sustain the project for the rest of 2026. We’ll use the remainder of the funds to purchase a laptop and for promotional materials & actions.

    Through this project we want to highlight that as citizens our collective effort can effect change, and inspire communities elsewhere to follow in our steps. We’ll be sure to share our learning. We also see this as being the start of a greater movement in our community by connecting pledgers to grow community confidence in the ability to work together. A climate action plan for Southside? Who knows.

  • Amount requested - £4,980

    Pilmeny Development Project’s (PDP) ‘Greener Generations Leith’ is a Multi-Cultural Climate Action Community Food Project, which will engage with over 120 older people from Ukrainian, Polish and Scottish communities in Leith. They will participate in weekly Climate Action workshops to learn about Climate Action, share traditions and cultures, gain practical skills re how they can contribute to Climate Change, along with preparation of a community meal. Extra food will be available to take home, thus avoiding food waste. We will also produce Climate Action Activity packs and newsletters for 100 socially isolated, housebound, vulnerable older people. PDP will work collaboratively with a range of local organisations in the delivery of this work Project activities will address issues around reduction of food miles, windowsill growing, low income related support (e.g. help with heating costs/insulation, cooking for one, healthy eating, shopping on a budget).

    Key Outcomes include:

    • Increased understanding of ‘harder to reach’ older people re impact of Climate Change and how it affects their lives

    • Climate Action has been linked to the everyday lives and interests of an increased number local older people & carers experiencing poverty, discrimination or disadvantage and has encouraged them to take positive action

    • Reduction of social isolation, loneliness of older people through the delivery of bespoke Climate Action activities

    • Encouragement of Climate Action related skills and a just transition for older people at a community level.

    ·      Collaborative working around Climate Action has been developed amongst key partner organisations

    • Help communities adapt to and build resilience to climate change.

    • Raise awareness of, and prompt, action on climate.

    • Communities, organisations and residents work together collaboratively to address the climate emergency.

    Through this project, we want to ensure older people are not the ‘forgotten generation’ in Climate Action and challenge the notion that it is only for young people. We want this project to highlight the invaluable contribution older people can make.

  • Amount requested - £5,000

    Bikes for Refugees (Scotland) will provide 50 isolated and socio-economically disadvantaged refugees and asylum seekers with access to free bicycles and cycling accessories (New Scots Welcome Packs). Bikes are donated by communities and refurbished by volunteers from our community hub with support from professional and qualified staff. We are more than a bike project. Rescued and refurbished bikes are given a 2nd life and provide essential mobility and freedom of movement to refugees and asylum seekers. With no right to work or claim state benefits, asylum seekers are provided with a daily allowance of only £7 for all living expenses that includes, food, clothes, toiletries, nappies/toys, and expensive public transport costs. A day bus pass in Edinburgh costs £5.50. Many asylum seekers are having to make difficult choices on a daily basis between feeding their families, and expensive public transport costs to access essential meetings and community services. Asylum seekers resident within shared accommodations such as 'hotels' are only provided with a 'weekly' cash allowance of £8. Support is also provided to unaccompanied asylum seeking young people with no parental or family support in the UK. Access to refurbished bicycles as an essential mode of sustainable transport, are a lifeline for many individuals and families providing access to community services, and promoting wellbeing amongst a community who have experienced much hardship, loss, separation and trauma.

  • Amount requested: £5,000

    CADi is a cargo bike delivery cooperative aiming to reduce the use of commercial motor vehicles within the city, to complement the work many other organisations are undertaking to encourage the use of walking, wheeling and cycling instead of cars for personal transport. We feel that goods delivery is not talked about or addressed nearly enough in the transition to sustainable transport. We also feel that a lot of courier work involving bicycles currently is underpaid, often performed by members of marginalised, politically unrepresented groups, and has a social stigma attached to it. Our aim is to change this by offering better paid and fairer work in the same sector, while offering a good service to our customers.

    We have found over the last few months that there is a need for local deliveries from local businesses, and have demonstrated that this need can successfully be met using cargo bikes. Our next project is to make this into a permanent service which is financially viable in the long-term, bringing in enough income to pay our members a living wage, and to invest enough money to keep our organisation running and to promote the use of bicycles in general and cargo bikes in particular within Edinburgh. At the moment, we regular carry out delivery services for a small number of local businesses such as East Coast Cured, Bludge Wines and Milk Catering, as well as assisting other organisations including Edinburgh Tool Library and Heart of Newhaven Community.

    Our next step is to move to a larger secure premises with enough space to store our bikes and potentially add more bikes, as well as carry out other tasks such as regular bike maintenance. We also plan to purchase more bikes to increase our capacity and resilience to mechanical issues, or even required scheduled maintenance on multiple bikes simultaneously. Addressing both of these issues will give us the confidence to expand our service to more customers and start offering paid work to more people. Doing this will increase the long-term viability of our organisation in support of the twin goals of promoting a socially just transition to sustainable transport within Edinburgh.

  • Amount Requested: £1,782.79

    Northfield & Willowbrae Community Council (N&WCC), in East Edinburgh, are progressing with developing a Local Place Plan (LPP) which covers the whole N&WCC boundary area. We intend to submit a Local Place Plan by June 2026 to City of Edinburgh Council to platform community voices and ideas about the future development of land and buildings in our area.

    N&WCC have formed a steering group to lead the development of the LPP and would like to enhance their skills in community engagement and starting conversations about climate resilience. Some public consultation was undertaken in 2024, but more needs to be done in 2025, especially focused on climate resilience issues.

    N&WCC LPP Steering Group has asked Imagine If. Space CIC to provide a quote for a workshop to review their emerging LPP projects and priorities with a climate lens to understand how place-based projects can support climate resilience. The proposed workshop has been designed with N&WCC to meet their ambitions of improving their community engagement skills and facilitation of climate resilience conversations. This aims to support their ongoing LPP process and enhance local understanding of what climate resilience might look like for the N&WCC area. 

    The Climate Resilience Workshop by Imagine If. Space CIC will be held in October 2025 following N&WCC’s Environment Fair in September. Imagine If. Space CIC is a Community Interest Company specialising in community engagement and supporting communities to turn ideas into reality. Further information about Imagine If including their values, creative approach and previous projects can be found on their website: https://www.imagineif.space/

    The climate resilient workshop will be located in Northfield Community Centre. The workshop will be advertised at the N&WCC Environment Fair in September 2025 which aims to highlight local climate action projects and gather local groups / organisations together.

    Our LPP steering group have the necessary skills to complete this workshop and gather relevant organisations together to explore what climate resilience looks like in N&WCC due to their ongoing LPP engagement work which has built a strong network of relevant, representative voices of N&WCC area. This is a great opportunity to enhance the steering group and other organisations skills in community engagement and build confidence locally to take climate action where and when it is needed. 

    This workshop will benefit the following people: 

    ● Steering group working on the Local Place Plan. N&WCC would like to weave in conversations about climate resilience into their ongoing community engagement strategy for the Local Place Plan to embed resilience. This workshop aims to upskill steering group members with best practice engagement tools and strategies for starting conversations about climate resilience.

    ● Local Organisations & Local Residents living in N&WCC area will benefit from the increased opportunities to engage with climate resilience due to the upskilling of the LPP steering group and other local organisations. The hope is to start conversations about projects that might improve local climate resilience which in turn should benefit people living in the N&WCC area.

    ● Biodiversity and Nature in N&WCC will hopefully benefit due to starting conversations about climate resilience and action which includes the conservation and enhancement of local biodiversity in our green/blue spaces..

  • Amount requested: £4,900

    Goodies SCIO works to redirect food and resources to reduce waste, support people and build community in Edinburgh. We prevent food and other goods from ending up in landfills by redirecting surplus items from supermarkets and cafes to people facing financial insecurity. We give directly to those in need, and we also run a community café and shop. Goodies has saved over 195 tonnes of items so far, drastically reducing the environmental impact of food waste.

    Our Cargo Bike Upkeep project will allow us to stop even more waste by helping to look after the bikes that our volunteers use to redistribute food. Keeping our wheels safe and moving will help us to deliver vital support and tackle the issue of unnecessary waste in Edinburgh.

  • Amount Requested: £5,000

    Networking Key Services (NKS) health and welfare organisation in Edinburgh, since 1987, combating isolation and deprivation and empowering communities through capacity building and information and knowledge. NKS since its establishment is working towards Improve quality of life, through a common platform to give a collective voice. The Primary needs of South Asian communities is to address issues of inequalities, empowering the marginalized women & children, Increased access to cultural-sensitive services, address complex barriers i.e. information, language, understanding climate emergency and sustainability, digital and social exclusion, access to training and courses, building social capital.

    with all these primary barriers NKS is additionally identified gaps in engaging skilled and knowledgeable individuals properly in the system, that could have benefited all the aspects of a progressive social aspects in a positive progressive society. The gap also indicates that this exclusion is resulting a NO contribution of skilled immigrants in the society especially towards climate emergency.

    Encouraging social integration and networking is crucial for building capacity and resilience. Creating platforms for community members to engage with the broader society, participate in community events, and establish professional networks can facilitate access to opportunities and support systems. Celebrating and preserving cultural heritage strengthens community identity and resilience is one of the necessities of all these communities to be effective in all strains of the socio economic and environmental needs of the country. Encouraging initiatives that promote understanding and sharing of knowledge and information is one of the key needs nowadays.

    This project will focus on storytelling method of awareness and information. It will focus on broader coverage of audience through stage drama and storytelling method to engage people towards climate change issues, in their native language as well in English. This will be a new experience for the audience that will help preserve traditions and foster a sense of pride along with encouragement towards sharing their knowledge in helping tackling the sustainability using their skills, that the South Asian communities are bringing in the country and ultimately in the city for a long-time.

    This project will also help strengthen the inter-generational connections, which is vital for passing down knowledge, traditions, and values, that can foster understanding, cooperation, and resilience across different age groups within the community to play their part in enhancing and encouraging sustainability through reusing, recycling and upcycling of goods and products. The project will also support and encourage collaboration across all the communities. the project will also help in protecting and enhancing local biodiversity.

  • Amount requested: £1,987.47

    What we'd love ❤️ to do:

    Our community hub would love to establish more greenspace around our building to enhance biodiversity in the Leith area. We would do this by introducing large planters filled with vegetables and flowers in our concrete car park at the front of our building. We would work collaboratively with community members to plant and maintain the planters through interactive informative workshops with a focus on biodiversity, wildlife, climate action, and self-sufficient growing. We would also like to install a large water butt to collect rain water for maintaining the planters, reducing water waste and our carbon footprint. Our application for funding also includes gardening tools, soil, plants, and dedicated staff time to establish and support the project.

    Benefits of the project:

    We would introduce and extend a B-line (or insect pathway) for pollinators and other bugs, involve community members who can learn or share skills about growing their own food, and improve the health and wellbeing of our local community through access to plants, wildlife, and freshly grown food. By establishing these planters, it provides us with long-term opportunities for the resulting benefits to continue and expand.

    Who we are:

    Duncan Place Community Hub is a registered charity in Leith operating as a profit-for-purpose social enterprise. After being under the threat of demolition, the building was saved by the local community. The Duncan Place charity was established, and funds were raised for a full refurbishment. Now a thriving and busy community centre in Leith, the hub has a growing programme of arts and wellbeing groups, classes and events, including a community choir, music circles, Lego groups, art sessions, tai chi, chair yoga, and laughter classes, community cinema, craft groups, D&D group, and much more. Our events programme brings folks together to share and learn, increase well-being, and to reduce social isolation.

    The building is also home to several other charities all making a positive social impact in Leith. Rather than pay full rent to a private landlord, the tenants pay a below-market value rent, have a secure home and are happy that the funds raised are used to provide free and low-cost community activities.

Projects to choose from: Category D: £501 - £1,000

  • Amount requested: £530

    The Friends of Granton Castle Walled Garden is a charity which started up in 2013 with the aim of rescuing the historic Walled Garden from private housing development.

    The Walled Garden lies by Edinburgh's northern shore and is all that remains of the old castle and its associated land. It is now a community garden, B-listed by HES, owned by CEC and looked after by the Friends group. The 500 yr-old walls still enclose a beautiful area of almost 3 acres, with the remains of an old orchard, kitchen garden, flower gardens and greenhouses. Since April 2017 volunteers have been coming in regularly to re-establish these areas, to keep some wilder sections as a haven for wildlife and to create places to sit in peace and tranquillity. 

    There is no mains water supply in the garden so we decided to maximise the collection of rainwater to keep our plants happy. Our current system is inadequate for the increased cultivation of fruit, flowers and vegetables that is now possible as more of the previously overgrown garden is cleared. We have reroofed some dilapidated potting sheds to create more surfaces for rainwater collection however we don't have the storage to make best use of the increased volume of water. We would love to triple the storage capacity with 2 new 1000L tanks and also to replace some old water butts.

    Storing more water would enable us to grow more of the wonderful produce which is currently shared between community organisations, visitors and volunteers.

  • Amount requested: £1,000

    Granton Goes Greener is an environmental project based at Granton Parish Church in North of Edinburgh.

    Our core is Share'n'Wear, a free clothing bank, where anyone in need or interested in reusing/recycling and upcycling could access free clothes, shoes and books.

    We do run free weekly sewing classes, where we teach people how to alter, repair and make clothes from donated and upcycled fabrics. We also run multiple other events on regular basis like the beach cleanings, plant shares or Big Giveaways in partnership with other charities and projects. We have organised and run some weaving classes in Winter 2024 using upcycled wool and materials and would love to continue this year.

    We already have multiple individuals interested and committed to attending the classes, but no resources to pay the weaving tutor as the classes were not part of the core funding, but a small grant. If we are awarded the grant, we would happily welcome new participants and look into expanding the classes even further.

  • Amount requested: £960

    Bridgend Farmhouse is a community-owned hub in Southeast Edinburgh focused on sustainability, wellbeing, and skill-sharing. We currently grow oyster mushrooms on-site using spent coffee grounds from our café, integrating them into free community meals, our café menu, and local markets.

    We have a partnership with RHYZE Mushrooms who have taught our volunteers how to grow and cultivate our own oyster mushrooms on site reusing used coffee grains from our cafe as a a growing medium. The mushrooms grown are then used for free community meals, used in our cafe or sold at our markets. This piece of circular economy has worked well at Bridgend, and we would like to continue and develop the practice.

    We began 3 years ago and as volunteers involved move on and new ones arrive a refresher is needed. For a small amount of funding, we can continue to grow oyster mushrooms as part of our volunteer program and by paying for a workshop from Rhyze on growing mushrooms at home from waste where folk can also take home their own grow kits we can facilitate growing healthy, sustainable, cheap, fresh produce for everyone.   

    We will partner with RHYZE Mushrooms to:

    Continue our partnership. practical support, and buy substrate from them

    ·       Deliver a hands-on workshop teaching participants how to cultivate oyster mushrooms, with each attendee taking home their own grow kit.

    ·       Host a public talk and meal (20 attendees) on the environmental and nutritional benefits of mushrooms, paired with free recipe cards to encourage low-carbon, plant-based cooking.

    For a comparatively small amount of funding we can  

    Build climate resilience locally

    Skill share and promote active citizenship 

    Promote a circular economy model 

    Raise awareness  

    Strengthen our community bonds and capacity 

    Address food waste, carbon foodprint of food transportation and packaging 

    Engage local people of all ages in climate action

  • Amount requested: £999

    Sustainable Rug Weaving Workshops Sessions

    We’re excited to bring back our much-loved Sustainable Rug Weaving Workshops – this time with an even more personal twist! Over three courses, each running for 8 hours across two days, up to 30 participants will learn how to turn old textiles into beautiful handmade rugs.

    This project builds on the success of our previous series, where participants transformed over 9 kilograms of discarded fabric into unique home pieces. This time, we’re encouraging people to bring along a sentimental item of clothing – something too precious to throw away, but no longer wearable – and give it a new life as a woven rug. We’ll also provide reclaimed fabrics for those who need them.

    Using handmade looms crafted from recycled wood by your workshop facilitator, participants will discover how to weave step-by-step, from preparing materials to finishing their piece. They’ll get information and tips how to make a loom themselves, so they can continue the craft at home.

    Our workshops are more than just crafting sessions. They are welcoming, creative spaces where people of all ages, cultures, and languages can come together. Because weaving is a visual and hands-on activity, it’s easy to take part without needing to speak English – making it accessible to everyone.

    Through this year’s workshops, we aim to:

    • Divert at least 9–12 kilograms of textiles from landfill

    • Equip 30 people with practical upcycling skills

    • Promote alternatives to fast fashion

    • Strengthen community connections across cultures, genders, and ages

    • Create a space that supports mental wellbeing and creativity

    By blending sustainability, creativity, and community spirit, the Sustainable Rug Weaving Workshops help people take meaningful action on the climate crisis – one thread at a time. Whether it’s a cherished shirt that’s too worn to wear, or fabric scraps waiting for a purpose, every piece has the potential to become something beautiful.

    Workshops will take place before March 2026, as soon as funding is confirmed. All materials, tools, and refreshments will be provided – all you need to bring is your creativity and, if you wish, a fabric with a story.


  • Amount requested: £1,000

    Who we are: We are Dalmeny and Queensferry Parish Church, a Gold award winning Eco Congregation putting environmental concerns at the heart of all of our actions following the mission call 'To protect, care for, and renew life on our planet'

    What we want to do: We want to visibly demonstrate this commitment by providing safe and secure cycle parking for all our church and hall users. We are seeking to renew and upgrade the bike parking at Dalmeny Kirk, in line with the ECCAN aim to 'Deliver climate action. More communities and people are taking climate action that is local, visible and promotes long-term change'. Promoting sustainable transportation is a key aim of Dalmeny and Queensferry Parish Church Eco Congregation and we are aware of the positive impact increasing cycling can have by reducing carbon footprint, improving air quality and reducing noise pollution.

    Why we want to do this: Dalmeny Kirk is a thriving Church of Scotland church in Dalmeny village - that happens to be right on the National Cycle Route 1. It is therefore in an ideal location to increase the number of people choosing active transport to travel to the church and halls. The kirk supports a good number of church and community events that people could cycle to - this includes the Dalmeny Kirk café, Sunday worship and a variety of youth and community groups using the halls on a weekly basis. However the current bike parking facilities do not encourage people to cycle to these regular events as there is nowhere secure to park a bike. We have held a series of 'Cycle cafes' and at the last café this year there were over 10 bikes at a time parked outside the church halls. Whilst this was a one off, it clearly shows there are plenty of people who could cycle to Dalmeny Kirk and who may be put off as there is nowhere for them to park or secure their bike.

    And the detail: The plan is to renew and expand the bike parking facilities in two ways. The first is to upgrade the current unsuitable bike racks to have two Sheffield stands situated by the hall doors. As there is only space for 2 Sheffield stands in this location we also want to provide overflow cycle parking between the church halls and the car park. This location will allow for a further 4 Sheffield stands to be placed to increase the provision for cyclists. This location is overlooked by the halls and will be clearly signposted from the main cycle parking at the hall door.

    We hope this will

    • Increase the number of hall and church users choosing to cycle rather than drive to the location

    • Increase the number of cyclists using the Kirk Café as a refreshment stop on the NCR 1 and other local routes

    Overall it will provide a visible sign that Dalmeny & Queensferry Parish church are committed to climate action in general and sustainable transportation in particular, leading to a longer term change in peoples transportation habits.


  • Amount requested: £1,000

    Sustainable Fashion Series

    We are Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust, and we run The Crannie Community Hub! We provide a packed weekly schedule of free activities and events for Edinburgh residents, with a busy wellbeing programme, arts programme, and many community events. The Crannie is a well-loved resource for many, acting as a space for people to learn, play, and meet people.

    We hope to host a series of sustainable clothing events. These would focus on reducing clothing/textile waste and promoting accessible sustainable fashion through practical workshops, educational discussions, and clothing swaps, amongst other smaller activities. The programme would be as follows:

    • Clothing repair workshop: participants can learn basic practical skills to repair their current clothing, extending its life rather than purchasing new clothes e.g. darning, patching.

    • Affordable slow fashion circle: Although slow fashion is sustainable and preferable, it is not always accessible to everyone, with many people buying fast fashion alternatives as these are much cheaper. This discussion would aim to give voice to people who are looking to share and learn about affordable slow fashion practices so they can practice sustainability within their means. This would ideally be hosted by a facilitator, with a short talk opening into a group discussion segment.

    • Children’s clothing swap shop: Children’s clothing has an extremely high turnover rate. We would seek to lessen this through encouraging community sharing. We would host a swap shop specifically for parents, guardians, and their children to come and get new clothes while trading in ones that children have outgrown. 

    • “Update Your Look” clothing workshop: This would seek to encourage people to update their pieces they no longer wear through crafting, sewing, patches, fabric paints etc. Participants would bring in clothing and accessories, and would leave with entirely updated pieces! This would focus on giving clothes a new life rather than purchasing new items. 

    • “Update Your Look” jewellery workshop: Participants would bring in their old costume jewellery to remake into new items. We recently hosted a beading workshop which was received very well, with all participants hoping for something similar in future. Additionally, we have a jeweller on the team at The Crannie who would host the workshop, showing participants how to easily repair and upcycle their old pieces. 

    All resources and equipment will be sourced through community networking with other organisations, charities, and local artist groups, to reduce carbon footprint and make sure the events are not only teaching people how to be sustainable, but are run sustainably themselves.

  • Amount requested: £1,000

    Edinburgh Soup: Good Food, Local Ideas, Real Connections

    Imagine it: A delicious bowl of soup, good company, great exchanges alongside supporting a great local community idea!

    Edinburgh Soup is an evening where people come together to share a meal, enjoy some local music, and hear a few short, down-to-earth pitches from local people who are working on small climate or community projects. Everyone gets a vote, and at the end of the night, one project walks away with the ticket money to help bring their idea to life.

    No forms, no PowerPoints, no pressure. Just people with good ideas, sharing them in a friendly space, and getting a boost of funding and encouragement to move things forward.

    The event will be hosted at Bridgend Farmhouse, a community owned and community-built hub in Southeast Edinburgh.  Our hope is that this event will also encourage attendees from further afield, thus learning about and building relationships with other groups and initiatives across the city.

    Like onions and carrots we need to work together so the theme for the night is collaboration. We’ll be inviting pitches from local groups and individuals who are working with others – maybe across neighbourhoods, age groups, or organisations – to make climate action more local, more creative, and more connected.

    And the event isn’t just for the people pitching! It’s for anyone who wants to get a better feel for what’s happening locally, meet others who care, and spend an evening in good company. There’ll be music, a warm meal, and plenty of space for chat.

    Soup nights like this happen in other cities, from Detroit to Liverpool. They’re simple to run, but the impact can be big – not just because they help fund small projects, but because they help build community. People leave feeling more hopeful, more informed, and more connected to what’s going on around them.

    ECCAN funding will help ensure this Edinburgh Soup is a success. The funding will go towards the hire of an accessible and welcoming venue, paying for soup and musicians and - crucially - spreading the word to a wide range of people.

    We’re a small team with lots of experience running inclusive, community-led events. We know how to create the kind of atmosphere where people feel relaxed, included, and able to speak up. And we believe that this kind of low-key, local gathering can help spark all sorts of good things. We will also be supporting those pitching (especially if they’re new to this sort of thing).

    Who doesn't like good soup?  Sometimes, a bowl of soup and a room full of people is all it takes to get things moving.

  • Amount requested: £1,000

    Sewing and repair for Environmental Change: Free Workshops for Young People

    Remode Collective is a social enterprise based in Edinburgh, focused on reducing textile waste and teaching people how to sew, repair, and reuse clothing. Since 2017, we’ve delivered creative workshops for communities across the city, making sustainable fashion skills accessible to everyone.

    With this project, we want to support teenagers and young adults—a group we’ve found often misses out on creative learning opportunities because they can’t afford paid workshops or don’t have access to the right spaces or support.

    We plan to run three free, full-day workshops during the October and February school breaks, specifically for young people aged around 14–20. The sessions will take place at our friendly, fully equipped studio in the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith.

    In each workshop, participants will explore:

    • The environmental impact of the textile industry

    • How to choose fabrics and clothing more sustainably by knowing your style and needs

    • Practical sewing machine skills

    • Mending techniques for extending garment life

    • A hands-on sewing activity (e.g. making a tote bag or pouch)

    • A bring-your-own repair lesson, with guided support

    We’ll talk about what fabrics are made of, how to spot quality, and why fast fashion causes harm to the planet. For example, did you know that reusing just 1 kg of clothing saves up to 25 kg of CO₂ emissions? These workshops give young people the tools and knowledge to take action—one stitch at a time.

    More than just learning a skill, sewing builds confidence, independence, and creativity. It’s empowering for young people to know they can make or repair something instead of throwing it away.

    At Remode, we already work with people who face barriers—refugees, unpaid carers, people in recovery or transition—and we’ve seen how much impact creative learning can have. Now, we want to extend that support to young people who may be feeling left out or overlooked.

    By voting for this project, you’ll help us give 15–18 young people the chance to learn lifelong skills, meet others, and make a difference for the environment.

    Support “Sewing for Change” and help young people sew a better future—for themselves and for the planet.

  • Amount requested: £1,000

    The purpose of the project is to show people how to grow edible food even if they don’t have a garden and to encourage young people to get growing. This will help people to understand where their food comes from and how to grow without using chemicals or peat. We will show people how to grow herbs and pollinator friendly plants by providing resources such as seeds and peat free compost, and using pots and containers, learn how sprout their own grains and discover foraging to see what is available to eat in natural green spaces. Leith is one of the most densely populated areas in the UK but also suffers from poverty and social deprivation. Gardening/growing is good for mental health and wellbeing and helps cut food miles & plastic Growing your own food helps people deal with eco-anxiety and fears about climate change. The project will increase understanding about where our food comes from and the advantages of eating locally produced food. 

Projects to choose from: Category E: £350 - £500

  • Amount requested: £350

    My name is Joana Avi-Lorie, and I am an artist and community creative practicioner, and a Story Weaver with the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SCCAN). My work focuses on using creative storytelling and participatory arts to engage families and children with the challenges and opportunities of climate action, particularly around adaptation. I believe that by connecting emotionally with our environment, its creatures and each other, we can nurture resilience and inspire meaningful change.

    In April 2025, I piloted a storytelling and arts-based workshop called 'The Most Beautiful Place in the World' at Stockbridge Library in Edinburgh, with funding from ECCAN’s GreenLight programme. The project was designed to spark meaningful conversations about climate adaptation among families, using creativity as a tool for reflection and expression. Adults and children were invited to take part in mapping activities that asked them to think about the places in Edinburgh they love and wish to preserve in the face of climate change, as well as those they feel need greater care and protection. In addition, participants identified local bird species and placed them into their maps to anchor their vision in the natural world around them.

    This project proved to be a gentle yet powerful way to open up discussion about climate impacts, connecting generations and fostering a sense of agency within the community. The participatory format allowed families to explore personal and collective values, rooted in the local landscape, while engaging with broader environmental themes in a way that felt accessible and hopeful.

    Building on the experience and learnings of the pilot, I now aim to take 'The Most Beautiful Place in the World' to another area of Edinburgh, specifically one more vulnerable to climate change impacts. I want to deepen the focus on climate adaptation by aligning the workshop content with the Climate Ready Edinburgh plan and other relevant resources. This next phase of the project will incorporate more targeted questions about community resilience, local risks, and practical adaptation strategies, while still centering storytelling and creativity as essential methods of engagement.

    I hope to support residents, particularly families and young people, in developing a stronger sense of connection to their local environment and a clearer understanding of the climate risks facing their area. I want to facilitate conversations that surface local knowledge and ideas about how communities can prepare for and adapt to change. In the future, I also seek to produce a collection of creative outputs, the maps, drawings, and shared stories that will come from these workshops, that reflect the hopes, concerns, and visions of participants. These 'artefacts' will not only serve as tools for further engagement but as a form of community-based climate storytelling that can be shared with local decision-makers, schools, and other groups.

    'The Most Beautiful Place in the World' is about imagining a future where beauty, care, and resilience go hand in hand—and giving communities the creative space to shape that future together.

  • Amount requested: £300

    Jock Tamson's Gairden is a busy and thriving community garden which provides a source of local, organically grown produce right here in the heart of the city.

    We aim to live in harmony with our natural environment by maintaining healthy habitats for the living creatures we share the Gairden with.

    We put people at the heart of what we do, aiming to build community through working together to maintain a sustainable growing space. In the middle of all this activity, we support people who need extra support to thrive including people with experience of mental health problems, those who are neurodiverse and adults with learning difficulties.

    A little time-out when people are having a bad day or just need to talk can really help. We provide support from our staff members, fellow volunteers and our Wellbeing Worker. To make our facilities better for those groups of people we'd like to make our Den (a garden building in a peaceful and sheltered part of the Gairden) more usable throughout the year by installing a solar panel kit. Lighting, charging points or a pc and mobile phones would be a small investment that would make a big difference to people's live by providing a discreet, safe space.

  • Amount requested: £370

    EdinBRIC is Edinburgh's cross-city collective for community groups seeking to maintain and improve their buildings. Established in 2023, EdinBRIC hosts a website with good ideas and case studies of things groups of residents have done together. EdinBRIC volunteers also attend community events, fairs, and street parties with our Retrofit Rover display.

    This application for Greenlight funding is to enable us to keep the website running for the next nine months, and to refresh the graphics on the Retrofit Rover to keep them up to date and useful.

  • Amount requested: £450

    From Wasteland to Wonderland: the Incredible Story of Meanwhile Fountainbridge

    Grove Community Garden is a volunteer-led organisation that transforms neglected or brownfield land into thriving, inclusive growing spaces in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. Since our founding in 2011, we have empowered people of all backgrounds and abilities to grow food, share knowledge, and reclaim urban space for community use. The Grove has also inspired similar community garden efforts across Edinburgh with their initial attempts to begin their own gardening adventures.

    In addition to maintaining three active garden sites, we have collaborated with a wide network of community partners—from schools and women’s health organisations to environmental co- ops and arts groups—using gardening as a catalyst for climate action, creativity, and connection. Our success has been influential in the final Masterplan for Fountainbridge, which will now provide community gardens for the residents in social housing and the broader Green Plan design.

    City of Edinburgh Council has informed us that contractors will soon be moving onto the site and so the empty site will finally be developed. However, the Grove and all the groups who have been involved in these ‘meanwhile’ activities are keen to ensure that this amazing success story of recycling, growing and sustainability should not be lost once the site is cleared and built on, but be recorded and celebrated through a public exhibition.

    Grove has recently joined forces with the Forge (a community makerspace), the Pianodrome (a performance venue built from recycled pianos), the Wikihouse (an open-source self-build housing experiment), and Rhyze Mushroom Farm Co-op (a circular economy food project) - all projects who were initiated and developed on the same brownfield site at Viewforth.

    We aim to create an accessible, travelling exhibition—featuring photographs, films, artefacts (such as piano keys or planter boxes), and talks—that captures the spirit and legacy of these initiatives before the site is fully redeveloped. The exhibition will premiere in Autumn 2025 at the new Pianodrome venue in Bruntsfield and may tour to local schools, libraries, and the Edinburgh Printmakers. The grant will fund the printing and mounting of around 30 photographs, five large banners (one per initiative), and display materials for key objects.

    The exhibition will provide a lasting record of community-led action on climate, creativity, and sustainability—and inspire future projects by demonstrating what is possible when land is placed in community hands. Outcomes include:

    • Community empowerment: Showcasing how communities can reclaim space and build capacity through collaboration, creativity, and shared ownership.

    • Collaborative learning: Highlighting the benefits of cross-sector working, where gardeners, artists, makers, educators and environmentalists build projects together and support mutual aims.

    • Climate awareness and action: Demonstrating how small-scale, practical initiatives (like growing vegetables, reusing materials, or designing inclusive public space) support biodiversity, reduce waste, and foster climate resilience.

    • Legacy and inspiration: Sharing this story widely will encourage others to think differently about urban land use, promote just transitions at the local level, and preserve a unique chapter in Edinburgh’s community history.

  • Amount requested: £350

    My project is a climate education board game aimed at children aged 10+. There is a lot of untapped potential in the use of games to engage and educate at a community level and my project intends to fill this gap.

    I originally created the prototype for a Climate Policy class at university. This summer I took it to Edinburgh Climate Festival and received lots of great feedback from children and adults alike.

    The game splits players into two teams. The green team who is trying to help the environment by taking actions that are good for the planet, and the red team who is trying to destroy the planet. To do this, teams take turns playing cards that they think will benefit their team’s agenda.

    These cards are a mix of small personal actions (e.g. switching off the lights when you leave a room) and larger policy changes (e.g. withdrawing from the Paris agreement).

    Players won’t know the effect their card has until after they play it, so they must think carefully about whether the action is good or bad for the environment. There are also question cards (e.g. name a greenhouse gas) which, if answered correctly will benefit that players team.

    The game board is a thermometer. A 5-minute timer is set at the start of the game. If temperature at the end of the timer is above the midpoint, the red team wins, and if it’s below the midpoint the green team wins.

    I plan to bring the prototype to several more climate events over the coming months, as well as children’s groups ranging from P4 to S2 to determine the most appropriate age range and get as much feedback as possible before getting the final version manufactured.

    My aim is to get multiple copies of the game produced and distributed across different Edinburgh based organisations, particularly those who work with children or focus on climate education. The goal is to get children engaged in thinking about climate and actions they take in their day to day lives as well as bigger topics. Presenting the conversation in a fun, accessible and interactive way facilitates quick learning and engagement.

  • Amount Requested: £500

    Friends of St Margaret’s Park is a volunteer-led community group based in Corstorphine, Edinburgh. We care passionately about our local green space and work throughout the year to keep the park beautiful, welcoming, and wildlife-friendly for everyone. Our group brings together residents of all ages and abilities to look after the gardens, plant pollinator-friendly flowers, care for trees, and maintain the park’s paths and borders. We also run litter-picks, seasonal planting events, and family-friendly activities that help people connect with nature and each other.

    Our project is to install a secure, weatherproof storage shed in the park so volunteers can safely store tools and equipment on-site. At the moment, tools have to be brought in and out every time we work, which limits what we can achieve and makes it harder for people to help at short notice. Having a dedicated storage space will make it easier for volunteers to work when they have time – whether that’s planting, weeding, watering, or maintaining wildlife areas – without waiting for an organised event.

    The shed will be fitted with secure locks, and located discreetly within the park. It will store shared tools (many reconditioned ), gloves, and materials so they can be reused and maintained, reducing waste and avoiding unnecessary purchases. This will help us work more efficiently, keep the park in better condition year-round, and expand the range of projects we can run.

    Our outcomes will be:

    - Biodiversity benefits: We can maintain pollinator-friendly flower beds, plant more native species, and care for habitats that support birds, insects, and other wildlife.

    - Climate action: Localised tool storage reduces the need for volunteers to travel with heavy equipment, encourages active travel to the park, and supports climate-adaptive planting and soil care.

    - Community involvement: With tools always available, more people can take part in looking after the park, from individuals with an hour to spare to families looking for a fun outdoor activity.

    - Skills building: Volunteers learn practical gardening, conservation, and sustainability skills they can use at home and share with others.

    This project directly supports Edinburgh’s climate and biodiversity goals by protecting green space, increasing resilience to changing weather, and encouraging grassroots climate action. It also helps deliver the City of Edinburgh’s Open Space Strategy by improving access to quality green space and fostering strong community stewardship.

    By voting for this project, you will help give local volunteers the resources they need to make St Margaret’s Park a greener, more vibrant, and more sustainable place for everyone. Thanks for reading!

  • Amount Requested: £350

    Craigmillar and Niddrie Matters (CAN Matters) are a group of residents from Craigmillar and Niddrie who are passionate about improving the local area and making it thrive.

    CAN Matters advocate for, and amplify the voices and lived experiences of the community. The group are committed to making sure residents' concerns are heard and acted upon whether it’s about public spaces, local facilities or essential services. CAN Matters will work towards a cleaner, safer, and more connected neighbourhood. We meet monthly and are open to anyone living in the local neighbourhood.

    We are applying for funding to organise a community garden competition in Craigmillar and Niddrie. As local residents, we have discussed what we think is an effective way of getting as many local people as possible involved in caring for the local environment in public spaces and in increasing bio-diversity through food and flower growing in their own gardens. We think this will encourage a wide diversity of people to get involved and help to raise awareness of what we can each do within our own home, street and neighbourhood. Historically there was a garden competition in the area which many took part in, and we think there would be good participation in this activity.

    It will benefit all residents of the local area, particularly those individuals and families taking part. Craigmillar and Niddrie are ethnically diverse communities, and we think this will encourage greater awareness and interaction. There will be eight categories and it will judged by three independent people from outside the community.

    We will open the competition in September 2025 and winners will be announced at an event later in 2026. We work in collaboration with other local community groups and charities to reach as many people as possible.

  • Amount requested: £350

    We are QPC Homes, a group of neighbours formed to mitigate climate change by upgrading the energy infrastructure of a high density housing development within Edinburgh.

    We want to transform our shared housing resources to upgrade to clean heating, insulation, as well as enhance the biodiversity of our communally owned land within the city of Edinburgh. We want to work with everyone who lives here, and play our part in fighting the climate crisis.