Celebrating our Change Makers – Local Heroes, Changing Lives
The National Lottery is celebrating our Change Makers – the exceptional people who are using Lottery funding to make a positive difference in their communities.
National Lottery players raise £30 million every week for projects and communities across the UK, so if you’ve played the Lottery, you’ve also helped change people’s lives near you.
Funding from The National Lottery makes a real difference to people, places and communities.
From helping young people to celebrating our war heroes, the projects funded by your Lottery money would not happen without the hard work of the dedicated people behind them.
Read more about just some of the dedicated individuals behind a selection of Lottery projects.
Meet the Change Makers.....
Dick Moules is helping to keep village life
alive 
Change Maker: Dick Moules
When Dick’s local village shop was threatened with closure, he was faced with a 14 mile round trip just to get a daily paper. Not content to sit back and let that happen, Dick mobilised his neighbours and collectively they started a ‘Save Our Shop’ campaign.
“The results have been unbelievable,” admits Dick. “We’ve got more than 50 volunteers, giving up their time to help run the shop now. It has become a thriving hub of the community and is a genuine lifeline for residents who struggle to get to shops outside the village. There’s such a nice feel to the place. Everybody feels proud of the shop and is really appreciative of what we’re doing. “
A Lottery grant of £7,500 gave Dick and his fellow volunteers the confidence to start the venture. Not only has Dick used this money to help create a vital service for his neighbours but he has also been instrumental in turning it into a successful one. “We made a £15,000 profit this year which will go directly back into village projects. Through the shop’s success we’ve been able to give money to the local pre-school, theatre group and get new windows for the village hall. It really has become a community enterprise.”
Not content with helping save the only shop in the village, Dick also stepped in when the local pub was set to close. Phoning the brewery he managed to convince them to let Humshaugh Community Ventures, which consists of local volunteers, to take over until a new owner was found. Instead of a boarded up, empty business in the middle of the village, Dick and the Humshaugh volunteers ensured the pub stayed open and kept its custom until new owners were found.
Allotments, orchards and bees are just a handful of the exciting projects that Dick and the team are now considering to continue the rural revival in Humshaugh.
For more information go to www.humshaughshop.co.uk
Chanelle McCauley is nurturing the young leaders of tomorrow
Change Maker: Chanelle
McCauley
Chanelle McCauley, 25, needed “inner strength” to overcome problems growing up and is now devoting her life to helping young people find a sense of purpose.
Bolton Lads & Girls Club is more than just a job for Chanelle. “I’ve invested so much emotionally in the development of local young people that it is now a way of life for me,” she explains.
Chanelle leads the incredibly successful and popular Young Leaders Project, a six week training scheme for young people under 19 who live in or around Bolton. It offers them the opportunity to give back to the community through leadership and volunteering roles, equipping them with the tools to deliver activities in youth club sessions. “Many of the participants come from difficult backgrounds that have often involved social services, “says Chanelle. “I can relate to what these young people are going through and recognise the need for inspirational leaders in their lives. One of our recent young men on a program couldn’t make a hot chocolate when he started the scheme, but he could make a three course meal when he left. This may sound like a trivial achievement but he learnt valuable, practical skills that he’ll keep forever. Other young people come to us who may be failing at school, are unmotivated and lacking a sense of purpose but by the end of the six weeks they are back in full-time education, looking forward to finishing school.”
“The project I’ve helped develop creates positive and engaging participation opportunities for young people giving them a chance to develop key skills and achieve formal accreditations. It also gives them the tools and skills they need to ease their transition into adulthood.”
“The project has been so well received that we have far exceeded our targets and actually have a waiting list of 60 young people. That’s an absolutely amazing feeling and I am so incredibly proud of what we are achieving in the local community. It is very rewarding to be a part of this change.”
£185,340 Lottery funding paid for their Young Leaders Project.
Irene has helped make her community the envy of its neighbours...
Change
Maker: Irene Hogg 
The community of Loanhead has a new purpose-built community centre, aka The Kabin. And it’s thanks to the determination of local resident, Irene Hogg, that this Midlothian village is now the envy of its neighbours.
Irene’s story starts back in the early 1990s when she first helped to open a much needed after-school club for local children. Over the years, Irene worked hard to expand the services on offer to the local community by setting up the Loanhead Community Learning Centre. In her own words, Irene admits “I do have a reputation for not letting go until people agree with me! But people say they understand how passionate and committed I am.”
Decades on the centre had outgrown its premises and it was then that Irene put everything she had into applying for funding to build a new community centre, securing £596,533 from the National Lottery.
“We asked the community what they wanted and put together a wish list. It included a charity shop, cinema, soft play centre, cafe, community garden, low-cost laundrette, and recording studio for the teenagers - lots of wonderful ideas.
“I was delighted the Lottery agreed to back our project. It took three years in the planning but I’m so delighted with what we have here. We’ve been able to provide nearly everything the community has asked for.”
Irene’s ethos in life is all about ‘the betterment of what is happening in our communities and the future of our children’ and she’s often encouraging other people to start their own hub, like the Kabin.
“People from the surrounding areas often visit here and say to me ‘we want of these in our community’. So I chat to them about how they can do that and encourage them to seek out funding from places like the National Lottery. I let them know how supportive I’ve found the Lottery to be – not just giving us the money to create this place but also the support and guidance they have offered, which has been incredible.”
For more information visit www.lclc.org.uk
Paul received an OBE for services to music
Change
Maker: Paul Whittaker (OBE) 
Paul was born in Huddersfield in 1964 and has been deaf all his life. At just 24 he founded Music and the Deaf, an organisation aimed at helping deaf people, and those who live and work with them, access and enjoy music. For over 20 years Paul has worked with thousands of people across the UK, researched and written guides to making music with deaf children, given hundreds of talks and signed theatre performances, as well as setting up a Deaf Youth Orchestra.
In 2007 Paul was awarded an OBE for Services to Music, but insists his biggest achievement is being able to change people's lives. “Nothing beats seeing the faces of parents who in a million years never thought it would never be possible for their deaf child to play an instrument, especially to such a professional standard.”
“We set up the National Deaf Youth Orchestra in 2006, since then we have received lottery funding to help support us, we have just received another £75,000 to help us establish it, this funding will make a huge difference and we are very grateful for the National lottery funding.”
For more information about Music and the Deaf please visit, http://matd.org.uk/
Change
Maker: Julie Evans
Julie Evans had a vision of the difference performing and visual arts could make to the South Wales Valleys communities, and she was determined to make it happen.
As a result of that vision the project she now leads helps people from three to 93 find their voice.
Julie has dedicated herself to encouraging people of all ages to participate and create their own artwork, promoting self expression, raising aspirations, contributing to health and well being and building their confidence and self esteem.
Julie’s passion for dance theatre is infectious, and she has persuaded people young and old to perform in venues across South Wales and the UK.
She is Director of Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) Community Arts, based in Pontypridd working across Valleys, and she still does disability equality dance theatre work.
She developed the pioneering project for working with older people, Cofio/Remembering. It began in 2002 looking at the memories of people from 60 to 93 years. It is now a touring dance theatre production that takes a trip down memory lane to the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s - dancing days, wash days, falling in love, outings to Barry Island on the charabanc, World War II, and more.
For Julie this work is simple – “I just want to share the beauty of dance,” she says.
From teaching digital media to people with learning disabilities, to helping teenage mums create their own magazine telling their stories, to helping three years literally find their feet, Julie’s vision has helped thousands of people to find themselves.
“Without the Lottery funding in the early days we wouldn’t be able to provide these services that engage so many people across the Valleys.
“Lottery funding helped us create new work and has inspired us to think in innovative ways, so we could begin to work with a wider range of people.”
“A lot of the work has been transformational in people’s lives. If you think of little ones at the age of three and then having the opportunity to take part all of their lives, you can imagine how proud I am of what we’re doing here.
“This work doesn’t just help build confidence, it helps people find a voice.”
RCT Community Arts has grown to 30 outreach freelance artists, and has received £94,154 of Lottery funding to offer a range of community arts projects.
For more information go to http://www.rctca.org.uk/
Paul Bosco McEneaney
Cahoots NI
The founder and artistic director of Cahoots, one of Northern Ireland’s top children’s theatre companies, Paul Bosco McEneaney is widely known and respected as much for his charismatic personality as for his boundless imagination and shrewd business acumen. He is constantly in demand as a theatre director and illusionist.
Cahoots has performed locally, nationally and internationally is are recognized by the creative industry and arts organizations as leaders in the field of children’s Theatre.
Paul was given the present of a magic set when he was eight years old and began entertaining his family and friends. By the age of eleven, he was a skilled close-up magician and already taking the first steps along a career path, which would lead him and his internationally-recognised company all over the world.
Last summer, he directed the world premiere of a children’s show on the famous Imagination Stage in Washington DC.
He has forged thriving partnerships with commercial companies and institutions in the Northern Ireland business sector, creating strong links between business and the arts. He is currently secretary of TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences), the UK Centre of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ).
Paul says Lottery Funding has enabled the creation of many high quality professional theatre productions to be developed using the performing arts, drama, magic , illusion, music, dance and circus skills. “Cahoots NI often brings the theatre to the audience, working in the fields of health and education in venues ranging from arts centres, schools, community centres, hospitals, respite and hospice settings, public and civic venues as well in Cahoots very own marquee.”