- 19 Aberdeenshire projects were funded in 2022 -

Outdoor adventures and providing service are two of Girlguiding's fundamental ways of providing informal education to girls. We are seeking to purchase environmentally friendly equipment which will allow us to meet outdoors, and to provide service to our community when needed. Shelters that are recycled can be used during camp, for outdoor meetings for fun, or when indoor meeting spaces are unavailable (like during covid). A power bank (powered by solar panels) will provide lighting and enable activities to continue. Both items can also be used at community events, and to provide support to the community in the event of blackouts, floods, etc. Giving the Guides access to these items will be educational. We expect these items to last ~10 years which will benefit upwards of 100 girls aged 10+, and also members of our community.

Ranging for Nature - building a team of community-led conservation volunteers. The Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire Scottish Wildlife Trust local group is long-established organisation, led entirely by volunteers. With support from the Green Participatory Budget Fund, we will work with Aberdeenshire communities in rebuilding nature on their doorstep. By purchasing materials, tools and equipment, we will enable a diverse range of people to get involved in projects that support nature and tackle the negative effects of climate change. The Ranging for Nature project will bring together young and old people, learning and working together, on projects such as a new local tree nursery, restoring a peat bog and planting wildflowers to support native pollinators. Through our 'ranging' conservation volunteer activities, on nature reserves and beyond in wider Aberdeenshire, people will gain experience in wildlife recording, develop practical conservation skills and enjoy the health and wellbeing benefits of being in nature.

We are working in collaboration with Stella's Voice and the Criminal Justice team to develop a growing space and market garden that will provide fresh fruit and vegetables for our food bank and local community. As part of our vision to reduce the dependency on our service, we aim to create opportunities for people to learn how to grow their own food whilst improving confidence and employability skills. The project will have a strong focus on education, mental & physical wellbeing, skills development, and sustainability. As we continue to build relationships with local schools, health & social care and other local groups, the garden will be expanded to develop various projects and courses. Our long-term goal is to establish a partnership with the aim of developing a social enterprise market garden, run and used by the local community.

Based in Banff, Grow @The Vinery is a positive, dynamic space which generates a sense of hope and pride in the community. There is a kitchen, cafe area, training space, wellbeing room and community garden with activities linked to accredited learning, work experience, apprenticeships and volunteering. An overarching aim of the project is to enhance environmental awareness and community food growing. We are seeking funding to enable us to increase our reach, ensuring flexible service delivery is integrated and accessible for vulnerable individuals, families and disadvantaged communities. Having an 8 seat hybrid vehicle will enable us to open up Grow @The Vinery programmes and services including gardening, cooking, wellbeing and Financial Inclusion to a wider number of people including those living in Portsoy, Whitehills, Aberchirder, Macduff and more rurally, who experience barriers to accessing services including poor transport infrastructure, anxiety around public transport, caring responsibilities, long term physical/mental health conditions, poverty.

We want to make Newburgh a wildlife friendly place that encourages everyone to enjoy nature. We will install wildlife boxes and planters to provide the focus for a nature trail, enabling people of all ages to engage with the natural environment. An interpretation board and a tree trunk bench for the Eider Road Wee Wood will provide an environmentally-friendly and accessible focal point where residents can enjoy the young trees.
We also want to help residents of Newburgh to address issues of fuel poverty and the cost of living crisis by providing equipment that will show how well homes are insulated. Residents will be able to investigate how they can reduce the overall energy required to keep their home comfortable. The least efficient buildings will form the priority basis for a follow-on project to make Newburgh homes more energy efficient in 2023 and beyond.

Alford Valley Community Railway (AVCR) is a community action trust focused on bringing back a much-loved facility to the local area. Various funding grants have been used to reinstate the buildings of the railway, it is hoped this application will provide the long-term running of the railway in a safe and economic way. The sleepers traditionally used in railways are hard wood and have a life span of 8-10years in wet conditions. The new replacement plastic sleepers, remove waste from the environment, reduce manual handling that happens when replacing wooden sleepers and gives a min of 50year life to the rail system.

Banchory growing together expands on the work of bonnie banchory the wildlife friendly village and bellfield rose garden. The aim is to make formal and informal planting in public spaces to be more wildlife friendly, including shelter and food sources. Educating people why and how to do the same in their private spaces. Also inclusion of food plants in the planting and talk about soil health and climate change effects on all of this.

Beannachar Camphill Community needs your vote to help 38 young adults with learning disabilities take climate action and develop the life and work skills needed to lead a happy and independent life. This project will transform our laundry workshop into an eco-friendly, sustainable model by centralising this essential activity for our community and creating a much-needed drying area. Improved efficiency of this design will significantly reduce emissions by 5.6tonnes CO2 every year, equivalent to driving halfway round the world in a petrol car. Students will be involved at all stages of the process, including collecting and delivering laundry to our residential houses. This provides life skills for independence and the opportunity to undertake meaningful and purposeful work which they can take great pride in. Our students are passionate about our planet and contributing to achieving net-zero would help them reach their goals of becoming active citizens in the climate pledge.

Buchan Community Farm is in a rural location; this benefits the people we support and allows us to have room for our animals. Countryside, plants and animals all provide therapeutic benefits. Some of the people we support can struggle to use public transport due to anxiety - especially after the pandemic, or do not live where public transport is available. We want to replace our old diesel minibus with a new electric people carrier and charging point.

• To reduce our carbon footprint.
• To help our social enterprise reduce running costs to allow us to help more people.
• To help people in rural isolation.
• To remove transport barriers.

The project is to expand the Shed's indoor storage/work space for refurbishing/recycling work. We currently struggle to meet the demand for this from the Ellon area community. We receive significant requests to refurbish furniture (mainly garden), bikes and garden tools/equipment. We don't have sufficient storage/work space to do this. We also wish to expand into refurbishing mobility scooters (other Men's Sheds do this). This recycling work helps to increase the use of bikes rather than cars and reduces the demand on natural resources by reducing the requirement for new purchases. In terms of meeting the wider aims of the Shed (to reduce issues associated with boredom, isolation, loneliness and inactivity in the adult male population) - this is engaging and rewarding activity for the men helping them to keep busy and active as well as providing a valued service to the community.

Ellon Castle Gardens are magical, with ancient yew trees surrounded by huge lawns used by our community for events, picnics, dog walking and regular group activities. We want to introduce solar-powered robotic mowers as a quiet and clean way to tend our lawns. Our heavy diesel-powered ride-on mower is noisy, time consuming, and costly to run; it causes environmental problems such as soil compaction, tree root damage, and carbon emissions. Solar-powered robotic mowers will solve those problems and improve the lawn health by returning the clippings to the soil, removing the need for fertiliser. Our volunteers will have more time to tend the flowers, heritage apple trees and historic monuments, and the tranquillity will be enjoyed by all our visitors, including red squirrels. The solar power will mean community events such as our Spooky Halloween Trail and evening storytelling can continue despite ever-rising energy costs (no energy cap for charities!).

Using thermal imaging to understand how Kemnay houses lose heat, Greener Kemnay wants to buy four thermal imaging cameras, moisture meters, thermometers and other specialist equipment, to conduct heat loss surveys in our village. Kemnay, has 2250 houses of different ages and styles, many of which have been modified, and each requires insulating differently. The surveys will help householders to understand where heat is lost. Local tradespeople will be able to enhance their knowledge and skills to tailor solutions for individual homes to keep them warmer. We will train all age groups to use the equipment, and so increase local awareness of climate change. Kemnay is a typical northeast village and we will share our findings with communities across Aberdeenshire, helping us all stay warm at lower cost, protecting houses for the long-term and reducing harmful CO2 emissions. We need your support to start this essential job!

The Grow Free Community are taking our lead from nature to create community food forests that will become beautiful and inspiring places for members and others to visit and learn from. Our bio-diverse food forests will have a sustainable permaculture design and help to build the knowledge and skills to cultivate, preserve and share a year-round local food supply. This grant would enable us to resource three sites, create pathways, fencing and rainwater collection/distribution structures that channel water naturally, provide protection, sensory play, interactive learning and serve as a communal shelter. Grow Free is a reciprocal peer community for anyone with experience of trauma and likely to lack social and practical resources to come together for emotional and practical support, resilience building, learning, skill and resource sharing. We are training trauma-informed peer facilitators to run group activities that support wellbeing and build resilience through engaging with naturally available resources.

A Heat Hub is planned in the Chapel at Inverurie West Parish Church. This space will provide free access for local people who struggle to heat their own homes. The room will be warm, lit and provide opportunities to charge devices. Also, there is free access to WIFI and hot drinks. We hope this will bring opportunities for social interaction, reducing the the impact of loneliness and isolation. The Heat Hub will be available 5 days a week during the opening times of the Acorn Centre. Currently this space has no insulation, through insulating the roof space and under floor, it will ensure the room is warm, mitigate fuel bills and reduce carbon.

In recent years there has been a noticeable shift to longer and sustained dry periods at Crathes throughout the spring and summer months. The water requirements for maintaining the estate are vast, and each year we are getting closer to having to stop watering or hosepipe bans. This has both a negative impact on the plants and landscapes, but also on the wildlife which thrives upon it. Crathes is on the doorstep of Banchory, a town of 8000+ and growing, with new developments being built adjacent to our boundaries placing further pressure on the water supply for all in one of the driest regions of Scotland. In recent droughts local authorities across the region have been forced to extract extra water from local rivers, further placing our local environment & wildlife at risk/under pressure. The need for the project is to increase resilience to climate change and lessen the impact of Crathes' high water use on our environment and local community. Whilst the availability of water may not be always seen as a climate issue in parts of Scotland, from what we have witnessed year on year in the North East it is becoming a crucial resource we must protect.

Our project would purchase visual aids to assist our attendees to better view local birds and wildlife on our guided walks. We would also use the funds to purchase a Zoom licence so we can share our indoor talks with a wider audience.

When our village hall was renovated around 15 years ago the main hall was well insulated but there was no money for the adjacent small hall. This is a cold sink which drains heat from the main hall and requires a lot of expensive heating. The walls and ceiling of this hall will be insulated.

The Seed Box, which is based in Ballogie near Aboyne, provides horticultural training and outdoor therapy to adults with additional support needs. We are outgrowing our current site and plan to set up a new site near Banchory to enable us to increase the number of co-workers we work with. We currently provide around 50 day sessions a week (2,000 sessions a year) and are aim to steadily increase this over the next 2-3 years. The site includes a shop and plant nursery which will enable us to expand the training we provide and allow customers to purchase locally grown seasonal fruit, vegetables, jams, plants and flowers from us, reducing their carbon footprint. We also want to encourage local people to grow more of their own plants and vegetables. This is part of our long-term plan increasing the number of co-workers we support and supporting the drive to Net Zero.

The Barn is a community-facing arts centre in Aberdeenshire that's on a journey to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. This project takes a 'fabric first' approach to improving the Barn's carbon footprint. By recommendation from Zero Waste Scotland, the Barn wants to insulate exposed roof rafters within the Barn main space. By doing this, the Barn will save 7,130 kWh in heat loss savings, which is equivalent to 1.2 tonnes CO2e. Zero Waste Scotland has recommended open-cell spray foam to insulate exposed gaps between roof rafters. This action is a positive, step-forward towards achieving the Barn's carbon-efficiency targets.