Through our Climate and Nature Friendly Communities Network we support, celebrate and recognise the achievements of those taking positive action across Scotland to protect and enhance our natural and built heritage. Our long term initiatives Beautiful Scotland and It’s Your Neighbourhood both feed into the network.

"The Beautiful Scotland awards gives us and our community a common goal to work towards, showing we care about where we live, and this national recognition really helps to keep us all motivated throughout the year. We really would encourage any group thinking about entering, either for the first time or following a break, to get involved – the friendly support network, inspiration and motivation it provides is invaluable!" Ray Theedam Parry, Lauder in Bloom, Scottish Borders

Our support to groups across Scotland helps them to improve their local neighbourhoods through direct action, creating spaces for people and nature. The programme aims to tackle two key needs gaps: the wellbeing of the community and the wellbeing of our environment.

In 2024, across Scotland through our Climate and Nature Friendly Communities Network, we:

• Supported, inspired and celebrated almost 250 community groups, from 28 local authority areas, regenerating local spaces (derelict land, their street or even their whole neighbourhood, village, town or city) through direct action such as litter picks, planting trees, growing fruit and vegetables, creating clean, green, sustainable spaces for people and nature to come together.
• Trained and empowered 40 volunteers to visit all of our groups for support, guidance and recognition
• Held two annual celebration and showcase events to inspire and give thanks
• Presented 35 national Special Awards to reward exemplar action, such as for biodiversity, climate change, and community engagement
• Organised almost 10 regional networking and celebration events, and online sessions for peer to peer learning and to encourage the formation of new groups to take positive action
• Supported communities and volunteers to donate almost 200,000 volunteer hours, which equates to an economic value of over £2 million pounds.

What has been so important to our group has been Keep Scotland Beautiful’s It's Your Neighbourhood scheme - it has inspired us and actively encouraged us to drive forward our community plans. And what a difference our certificate made! It helped us focus on our achievements and made us realise we could do even better! It instilled further community pride in the garden and gave a real sense of achievement in that our efforts had been recognised. David Carruthers, Gairloch Sitooterie - Wildlife Watch Garden, Highland