Across Scotland right now, something remarkable is happening — and most people will never see it.
In community halls, recovery cafés, and meeting rooms from Shetland to the Borders, thousands of people are quietly giving their time to support others through some of the most difficult periods of their lives. They are welcoming strangers through doors. Making tea. Listening without judgement. Sharing their own experience of recovery to let someone else know it is possible.
They are volunteers. And during Volunteer Week 2026, we want to make sure their contribution is seen, named, and properly recognised.
The Numbers Behind the People
SRC’s research into recovery communities across Scotland — the most comprehensive mapping of its kind — revealed the scale of what volunteers contribute.
Of the 41 recovery communities that took part in our research, 29 reported having volunteers. The findings are striking:
- 398 volunteers are active across Scotland’s recovery communities
- Together, they contribute an estimated 2,789 hours of support every single week — an average of 103 hours per community
- Those communities collectively support an estimated 2,174 people every week
To put that another way: Scotland’s recovery community volunteers give the equivalent of nearly 70 full-time working weeks of support every single week of the year. Without payment. Often without recognition.
The scale of individual contribution varies enormously — from 2 volunteers at Lived & Living Experience Recovery Network Shetland and Dundee Recovery Network, to around 60 at Street Connect. From 3 hours per week at Dundee SafeZone Project, to 1,000 hours per week at Patchwork Recovery Community. What those numbers share is this: every single one of them represents a person who chose to show up.
What Volunteers Actually Do
It is easy to speak about volunteering in the abstract. It is harder — and more important — to be specific about what this work actually involves.
Recovery community volunteers across Scotland carry out a range of roles that span the full life of a community:
Peer support — providing one-to-one support for members of the recovery community, drawing directly on lived experience to offer something no professional training alone can replicate.
Group support — helping run groups and group activities that provide structure, connection, and purpose for people at every stage of their recovery journey.
Family support — providing support to family members, who are too often overlooked in conversations about the impact of substance use.
Welcoming — being the first face someone sees when they walk through the door. A simple role that carries enormous weight for people who may have experienced significant rejection and stigma.
Promotion — representing their communities at events and meetings, helping make recovery visible in places where it might otherwise be invisible.
Practical roles — setting up venues, preparing and serving food, administration — the unglamorous work that keeps communities functioning.
Governance — serving as trustees, bringing their experience and commitment to the formal leadership of recovery organisations.
What this list makes clear is that volunteering in recovery communities is not peripheral. It is structural. It is the difference between a community that exists on paper and one that actually functions, day in and day out, for the people who depend on it.
More Than Hours: What Volunteering Means for Volunteers Themselves
Our research also sheds light on something that deserves more attention: what volunteering gives back to the people who do it.
Volunteers in recovery communities told us that the role helped their self-confidence and gave them new skills — both those directly related to recovery, such as coping strategies and communication, and broader skills that enhanced their employability. Some described how taking on extra responsibility gave them a commitment that helped ensure they kept coming back. Others spoke of getting out of their comfort zone in ways that proved genuinely transformative.
There were examples of volunteers moving on to college and university. Of gaining employment. Of building lives they had not believed possible.
This is the reciprocal nature of recovery communities at its most powerful. Volunteering is not charity flowing in one direction. It is an act of mutual recognition — one person’s experience becoming another person’s pathway, and both lives strengthened by the connection.
This Work Is Not “Extra”
During Volunteer Week, there is a temptation to frame volunteer contributions as something additional to the “real” work of recovery — a generous supplement to the formal service infrastructure. We want to be clear: that framing is wrong.
Volunteer contributions strengthen community connection, reduce isolation, and help make recovery visible in places where formal support does not always reach. They extend the hours, the warmth, and the human capacity of communities that are already doing vital work with limited resources.
Too often, this labour — particularly when it is rooted in lived experience — is taken for granted or treated as limitless. It is not limitless. And the people who provide it deserve more than occasional recognition.
From our Board, our Chief Executive, and the whole SRC team: your compassion and generosity are not peripheral to Scotland’s recovery movement. They are its heart.
You create pathways into recovery. You strengthen resilience in individuals, in families, and in whole communities. And, quite simply, you save lives.
What the Evidence Tells Us About Recovery Communities
The volunteering picture sits within a broader story about what recovery communities in Scotland are, and what they make possible.
SRC’s communities research found that recovery communities provide what their own members describe as “life-saving” support — a word that came up repeatedly and without prompting. The benefits identified by communities themselves span recovery, skills development, social interaction, safe spaces, information and signposting, a sense of belonging and purpose, improved mental and physical wellbeing, food provision, and family support.
These are not peripheral outcomes. They are the conditions that make sustained recovery possible.
The research also found that recovery communities are an important part of the wider recovery pathway, complementing formal service providers and reaching people in ways that statutory services cannot always replicate. The trust built through shared experience — the foundation of peer support — is not something that can be manufactured by a system. It has to be earned, and it is earned by people.
Looking Ahead
SRC is committed to supporting recovery communities to grow, sustain themselves, and develop the volunteer infrastructure that makes them strong.
Our communities research identified a clear appetite for SRC to support volunteer recruitment and training — and that work is part of our strategic direction going forward. We know that volunteers are not an inexhaustible resource, and that recovery communities need practical, sustained support to recruit, develop, and retain the people who give so much.
Volunteer Week is one week. But the work of recognising and investing in volunteers is a year-round responsibility — for SRC, for funders, for policymakers, and for everyone who cares about the future of recovery in Scotland.
Find Out More
The statistics and findings referenced in this blog are drawn from SRC’s communities research, which provides the most detailed picture to date of recovery communities across Scotland — their structures, their people, their challenges, and their extraordinary value.
You can access a summary of the report, along with other resources and publications from SRC, at our resources page:
