St Michael's Church will create a Living Wellbeing Labyrinth in its  large grounds and garden. Our Garden is natural space for nature to thrive and people to find natural peace and wellbeing. 

This is a new project delivered by Cruse Scotland which will increase climate change learning among our network of volunteers across Edinburgh and the communities they live in. Our Cruse Climateers project will give our team of 50 bereavement support volunteers and staff in Edinburgh access to training which will:

• increase their learning about climate change and its impact on our communities
• provide knowledge and practical advice on how to volunteer for Cruse Scotland in a more environmentally sustainable way, e.g. use of online delivery to reduce travel to sessions, paperless communication and resources.
• provide practical advice on how to lead a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle and contribute to Edinburgh’s Net Zero target , e.g. use of public transport, reduce/reuse/recycle
• encourage and support our volunteers to pass on this knowledge and advice to the communities they live in.

We would use the money to pay the costs for a Trainer to design the course and deliver it to our Edinburgh based volunteers and staff over 3 half days using Zoom/Teams.

Since 1999 Fresh Start has been supporting people moving on from homelessness to ‘make a home for themselves’ across Edinburgh. Responding to people with lived experience of homelessness we provide practical support as people move on from temporary accommodation into new unfurnished tenancies.

Our service-users typically are allocated unfurnished properties and do not have the means to purchase the goods that make a home. Fresh Start provides Starter Packs of essential household goods - crockery, pots/pans, bedding, towels - to homeless households within the first 3 days of them moving in to their new tenancies, relieving financial burden and ensuring they have the essentials they need to settle in their new home.

We supply 13 different Starter Packs of quality used-household goods which are donated by the public and local businesses. Teams of volunteers gather in these donations and sort them in our warehouse for distribution.  

In 2022 we distribute 14,430 packs and helped over 2,000 people moving out of temporary Housing. We diverted 75,500 kg (75.5 t.) of goods from landfill.

We would like to create a zero food waste base in Edinburgh that we could use as a base for sorting and distributing the foid from, this would also allow us to recruit more volunteers, training them up as collectors and sorters, and allow us to collect surplus food from more stores throughout the city, currently we are only able to cover a small geographic area in west Edinburgh but have had enquiries from all across the EH postcodes.

The bulk of our food rescuing and distributing is done in the evening and early mornings so we would like the base to be used as an educational resource throughout the day, inviting people to come and learn about food waste, run classes for local groups, potentially cooking classes if our premises allow, where attendees can learn how to make meals from scratch, improving health and saving waste; and also provide a save and non judgemental space for those looking to collect free food.

we would also like to train volunteers to go and speak at school and community groups to present to them about food waste and open up the larger conversation, change attitudes and perceptions.  This is something that we have already done on a small scale, presenting at assemblies ing small groups to make simple meal items using surplus food at health week and we would love to expand this program.

We want to create a Community Garden in the Citadel playground. Citadel children, young people, parents/carers and older people will be involved in every part of the project from making wooden planters, through planting and tending seasonal fruit and vegetables to using the produce to cook healthy meals in our groups.

This project will be a great way to educate children, young people and their families about about the benefits of locally produced food and sustainable development. It will also promote healthy, affordable fresh meals at a time when the prices of processed food are rocketing. We also know that making and growing things together is great for the mental health and wellbeing of all ages. Finally, involving older people in our intergenerational cafe will be an opportunity to share wood working, gardening and cooking skills between the generations. 

Edinburgh Remakery wants to encourage young people within local Edinburgh schools to engage in courageous conversations around environmental sustainability, particularly related to e-waste. Our project will give them the opportunity to get involved in a sustainable project which encourages achievable actions they can take to support the climate and help their local communities reduce their carbon emissions.

Our Tech Donation Box for Schools programme will see the manufacture of five donation boxes which will be placed within primary and secondary schools across Edinburgh. They provide an easy way for people to pass on their old devices, such as laptops and phones, for them to be repaired and reused, or responsibly recycled. These will allow young people to engage with the circular economy and learn simple methods to reduce their waste. This project also allows students to support their local communities, as a portion of all the devices that are donated through our Tech Donation Boxes, go on to support our Tech Gifting Project and are given for free to people in need across Edinburgh.

All donated devices are securely wiped of data and categorised for repair, refurbishment and reuse. If they cannot be repaired or refurbished, they are broken down into component parts which are then used to repair other devices or are responsibly recycled so that as little as possible goes to waste.

Our project will engage with:

• 15 schools across Edinburgh
• Young people within schools and their friends & families
• Individuals and families facing digital poverty through our Tech Gifting Programme

To promote our project, we will engage with school heads, the leadership and sustainability teams  A ‘Programme Pack’ will be distributed to each school, outlining the programme and its benefits in taking part. We will develop core messages around e-waste that the school can use in its communications, and details of how the school can help promote its participation and impact.

Our CEO will visit each of the participating schools to deliver a presentation about e-waste, and its impact on the environment, and explain how the Tech Donation Boxes provide an achievable and accessible way for people to take action, whilst promoting environmental sustainability and supporting our people and our planet.

Each participating school will receive a report at the end of the term which details the number of devices they have helped to save, and their carbon savings. Schools will also be eligible to enter our Environmental Champion Awards and have the opportunity to be awarded a prize for their participation in the project.

Our aim is to not only spark important conversations about climate change but to also provide ways for young people to take positive action to help Edinburgh become a greener city and help it meet its net zero targets.  

We request funding to allow us to purchase an electric vehicle which will support all of our client care services and will specifically support our meals on wheels service which is completely free for those on low incomes. 

We deliver 150 meals per week to local older people living across the North of the city.  Meals on wheels ensures that local older people eat well and have something positive and reliable to look forward to.  Meals are cooked fresh in our community kitchen, delivered direct to homes hot and ready to eat.  Clients are provided with menus, with all dietary needs catered for; client feedback informs changing menus.  We make sure the same friendly faces visit regularly so that clients can look forward to a chat with their delivery and our staff/volunteers can raise any issues or concerns if needed. 

Our current car is old, expensive to run and is not environmentally friendly.  In just the last two months, we have delivered over 1,320 hot meals in our current vehicle and we estimate that we currently cover over 2,550 miles a year distributing this life-saving service.  However if we received funding to switch to a used electric vehicle we will significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and this will support and contribute to the net-zero target for Edinburgh. Furthermore, by purchasing an electric vehicle, we will significantly reduce the cost of our deliveries - enabling us to increase the capacity of our service and reach more older people in need. The demand for the service is growing rapidly and we  have experienced a 195% increase in free meals delivered since September.

We aim to develop three distinct groups of croft users over the funded period.

MineCroft

MineCroft was a series of short programmes which ran on a shoe-string budget over the winter months. It was highly effective & extremely popular hence the reason we would like to roll it out into a more coherent project. This is a pun-tastic bush-crafting/survival-skills, child-led, education/play project involving three-hour sessions for youths (in all weathers - shelter-building is incentivised by bitter winter weather!) on our multipurpose 2-acre green space in a highly urban area (Leith Community Croft), supervised by experienced facilitators. Minecraft is a global sensation in the video-gaming world on which we capitalised to inspire interest in the sessions. We brought it to life for the children in the great outdoors. The pilot sessions were the most successful children's activities we have ever run (& parents enthused too). This report was from a typical session: 'The children were rightfully proud of their shelters & the fire-building skills they had honed. 

Youth Steering Group 

Out Nature Nurture Children programme demonstrated the value of environmental/outdoor education for vulnerable children (who were affected by issues including anxiety, suspected ADHD, traumatic bereavement and substance-abusing parents). A wealth of research provides evidence of positive correlations between time in nature and improved productivity, lower stress levels, refined learning and problem-solving skills, and even enhanced recovery from illness. We would offer older children and teens, who hang out on The Croft a chance to develop their own Steering Group enabling them to have their say in the day to day operations of their space. 

Workplace Wellbeing Days 

Organisations are increasingly recognising the call to establish a working environment which allows people to meet their physical and mental wellbeing needs, allowing people to positively contribute their best towards their co-workers and their organisation. The capital cost of running Wellbeing Day programme is small compared with the vast array of evidence, which reveals multiple advantages: greater individual resilience as-well as the organisations, enhanced employee well-being within a nature-positive culture, feelings of contribution to the climate emergency, and addressing unequal access to green spaces. Offering Work Wellbeing Days to organisations regardless of sector allows EiC the opportunity to inform larger groups of people about the climate crisis at hand, calling attention to the importance of the intrinsic human draw to nature and its link to overall wellbeing and quality of life. 

We want to set up small farms in three community cafes around Edinburgh: training volunteers from these spaces to transform waste including cardboard and coffee from their cafes into delicious nutritious food they can cook and use in their cafe’s kitchens.

Being able to grow our own food indoors from local waste is a really valuable skill in a time of increasing climate instability which threatens outdoor crops. Indoor mushroom cultivation can be practised year round at household or community levels which is very significant in a country where we have to import 90% of our fresh produce in winter.

The aims of the project are to  1) reduce waste and emissions by growing food with zero food miles from waste within cafes 2) engage new audiences in food growing, and its links to climate change by offering an accessible year-round indoor food growing project 3) Train people in mushroom cultivation skills to build resilience in our communities 4) build connections across Edinburgh by starting a network of community micro mushroom farms.

The funds would be used to pay for a mix of material and staff costs. These include the material costs of building an automated mini mushroom farm and the supplies needed to run it for a year. In a space the size of a cupboard we can set up a mushroom farm able to grow over 10 kilos of fresh mushrooms every month. The grow space would be located in a public facing part of the cafes to allow people to enjoy watching the beautiful mushrooms grow. 

The staff costs would cover extensive training for volunteers from the three community spaces we partner with. This training would include: a tour of our own mushroom farm; time spent with volunteers building their own micro-farm; 5 follow up sessions at the cafes where we carry out the mushroom ‘inoculations’ together, a special session on cooking mushrooms and some follow-up check-ins and support.

Because mushroom cultivation can be practised indoors year round, sat at a table, without the need to stoop like most forms of food growing it is accessible for people with mobility issues, be that because of age or disability. Mushrooms also have a very short cropping cycle, taking only a few weeks to grow - making them an exciting project for the short attention span of children. We plan to use these features to engage a diverse group of people who may not usually participate in food production. As a final part of this project we would bring together people from the three cafes to take part in shared events, including meals. This would be an opportunity to share their experiences learning to grow mushrooms, and form a diverse network from across the city of new community mushroom growers.