Who are we?

The West Midlands Environmental Leadership Programme2 (ELP2) is powered by Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts 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, the ELP2 team will combine its expertise in engaging underrepresented youth with 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 - this was where ELP2 began.

As of Spring 2025, ELP2 and the team found a new home with Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, where it continues do be delivered with Shropshire Wildlife Trust.

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.

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 900,000 members, over 39,000 volunteers, 3,600 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people getting together and working with others to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live and work.

Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a registered charity in its own right founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Taken together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts.