Who are we?

The West Midlands Environmental Leadership Programme2 (ELP2) is powered by UpRising and Shropshire Wildlife Trust and it is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

Thanks to National Lottery players, ELP2 has been awarded almost £1.5m over 5 years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. Using this grant, UpRising will combine its expertise in engaging underrepresented youth with Shropshire Wildlife Trusts experience in outdoor learning and nature connection to deliver this exciting programme!

ELP2 came about as a result of UpRising’s participation in the National Lottery-funded Our Bright Futures Consortium. From 2016 – 2020, Our Bright Futures funded UpRising to run its Environmental Leadership Programme for 500+ young people from diverse backgrounds and Shropshire Wildlife Trust’s Growing Confidence programme to support 5,390 young people with outdoor experiences and practical conservation skills.

As OBF ended, UpRising identified the value of outdoor learning and approached SWT to develop a programme across the West Midlands region to combine UpRising's record of engaging and supporting young people from all communities with SWT’s experiences of outdoor learning, building nature connection and community campaigns. And that's where ELP2 began! With the support of the Climate Action Fund, we designed a programme to help young people and communities create a deeper bond with the environment and change their behaviour towards nature, helping young people be a part of something bigger!

The National Lottery Community Fund

We are the largest funder of community activity in the UK – we support people and communities to prosper and thrive.

We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with Government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.

Our funding has a positive impact and makes a difference to people’s lives. We support projects focussed on things that matter, including economic prosperity, employment, young people, mental health, loneliness and helping the UK reach NET Zero by 2050.

Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, our funding is open to everyone. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life. 

National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £43 billion has been raised for good causes. National Lottery funding has been used to support over 635,000 projects - 255 projects per postcode area.

UpRising is a UK-wide youth leadership development organisation and recognised as a pioneering charity promoting the issues of social mobility and equality. Our mission is to open up pathways to power for a diverse pool of young people who have talent, but lack opportunity. We equip under-represented young people with the knowledge, networks, skills and confidence to fulfil their leadership potential, find new opportunities and transform the world around them through social action. We offer a range of leadership and employability programmes for 18 - 25 year olds and have been delivering programmes since 2008. In that time, we’ve supported over 5,000 young people who’ve impacted nearly 20,000 others in their communities.