As an average UK citizen we each need to plant nine trees every year to balance our carbon consumption. 9Trees’ main aim is to improve UK biodiversity and mental health through access to woodlands as well as balancing carbon footprints for businesses and individuals. Their model has the potential to be not only a sustainable solution, but a large-scale successful Community Interest Company (CIC) that connects businesses and landowners from Lands End to John O’Groats, working together to meet these aims.

Access the Dales is a newly formed charity providing free wheelchairs to help more people access walks across the Dales. Founded by a teacher from Leeds and her husband – a couple who simply wanted to keep doing what they loved after Debbie became a wheelchair user – they soon realised that there was lots of work to be done to help a wider range of people, and particularly children, access the countryside all over the UK.

Men in Sheds (Hull) is a thriving charity that reduces social isolation for older men in the Hull area. The charity provides new personal connections, a positive focus, and a foundation from which to improve physical and mental health. In doing so, they also help their wider community, regularly contributing their woodworking skills to valuable community projects.

Outkast Panda Crew are a team of volunteers improving the lives of young adults in the Hull area who are at risk of becoming involved in anti-social behaviour and crime by offering them a route to positive engagement and success in their community, through a subject that is interesting and accessible to them – cars. As well as finding a positive focus for their time, members gain a range of employability skills with tangible routes into further training and employment, whilst building the soft skills and community links that can help them to improve their self-esteem.

Clean Planet are a team of trained divers using their skills to remove and recycle lost and abandoned fishing equipment, termed “ghost gear” from their local coastline around Redcar – near Middlesborough. Ghost gear can be deadly to marine wildlife and the team regularly save trapped and injured animals. In winter the gear often gets washed on to the beach, so the team also run beach cleaning sessions. Having removed 126 miles of fishing line in two years, they have recently become a registered charity, with ambitions to train more divers and expand their operation further out to sea.

NaariSamatā is a UK-based charity working to improve safety of women, children and underprivileged marginalised communities in India. Started by Anita Rajan, an IT professional based in London who’s passion for the cause led her to build a team and start the charity in 2021, they have already completed projects such as providing shoes and meals for school children and educational courses on gender equality for schools. They have recently introduced an “adopt a village” project that sees women and girls’ life chances improved through holistic support for the villages they grow up in.