Our newspapers and websites are at the heart of the communities they serve - campaigning on a wide range of issues to improve the quality of local people's lives, providing our audiences with a platform to air their views and leading appeals to raise funds for good causes. Our work is reflected in these case studies:

• May 2013 - With the help of its readers the Fenland Citizen made a dream come true for a housebound young man. Robert Smith, who is only 24, is 8ft tall, weighs 18 stone and suffers from Proteus Syndrome, the same condition as elephant man John Merrick. He is bedridden after being paralysed by a bout of meningitis five years ago and has not left his home for a year. A huge fan of WWE Wrestling, it was his dream to meet champion John Cena, and with the help of Citizen readers who donated money and volunteered their time this was achieved in the form of a trip to Nottingham's Capital FM Arena.  
   
• April 2013 - The Hemsworth & South Elmsall Express went out into the community to celebrate its 100th birthday and set up a market stall in the town - complete with balloons and bunting - to offer readers a slice of birthday cake. The paper also published a free souvenir supplement featuring the story of a former champion cyclist celebrating his own 100th birthday as well as reader-contributed pictures, and stories and pictures from two schools marking their centenaries this year.
   
• March 2013 - The Mansfield Chad's appeal to raise £750,000 for a new MRI scanner for the local hospital came to a successful end with the donation of £250,000 from an anonymous businessman. The paper had already helped to raise nearly £200,000 before the huge donation and health bosses pledged to make up the shortfall so the scanner could be up and running by early May. The Chad was praised by local MP Gloria De Piero for leading the campaign.
   
• March 2013 - The Daventry Express has launched an appeal to raise funds for a two-year-old brain damaged boy whose parents are trying to bring him home from a specialist paediatric rehabilitation centre in Surrey. The money will pay for medical expertise and equipment for round-the-clock care at home. Staff at the Express were so keen to help they organised their own family quiz night which raised £600 and was attended by nearly 100 people. A number of other events are planned.
   
• February 2013 - The Yorkshire Evening Post has launched an apprenticeship campaign to reduce youth unemployment. Leeds Works will encourage businesses, particularly small and medium-sized firms, to create new apprenticeship schemes in a bid to tackle chronic youth unemployment in the city. The campaign will highlight existing apprenticeship programmes and showcase the success stories of apprentices in the region.
   
• February 2013 - The Mid Sussex Times has teamed up with a local BP petrol garage to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Customers at the garage were offered a free car wash and a copy of the Mid Sussex Times in return for a donation to the charity. The joint venture has proved a successful campaign that consistently raises hundreds of pounds - last year the figure was nearly £1,500.
   
• February 2013 - A Manx Independent campaign to wipe out a children's waiting list for specialist diabetic insulin pumps has raised nearly triple its original target. Pumps 4 Kids, a joint initiative with the Manx Diabetic Group, has transformed the lives of children with Type 1 diabetes on the Isle of Man, offering them the chance of pump therapy instead of multiple daily injections of insulin. The campaign was launched last March with the aim of raising the £20,000 by December. More than £55,000 has been raised with money still coming in.
   
• January 2013 - We aim to engage with people of all ages and were delighted when 93-year-old James Warnock from County Tyrone took out a subscription to the Ulster News Letter app. He proved adept at scrolling through the pages on his iPad and said he thought the app was better than the newspaper. "One of the best things about it is that you can zoom right in to the pages, so I can read it much better. For people like me at my age, you sometimes need a little help reading and the app is great for that."
   
• January 2013 - The Sheffield Star has launched a campaign to recruit 12,000 new people to the NHS organ donor register. The Gift of Life campaign aims to find volunteers from South Yorkshire and Derbyshire before inspirational transplant survivors compete in the Westfield Health British Transplant Games in Sheffield this summer.
   
• December 2012 – Many of our newspapers run successful Christmas Toy Appeals with readers making generous donations each year. The Burnley Express runs a particularly successful appeal in conjunction with its local Salvation Army. Last year the paper collected a staggering 2,000 gifts and staff are hoping to top that this year.
   
• December 2012 – Staff at the Halifax Courier and Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper Group are spreading festive cheer with a number of community Christmas campaigns. The Wakefield Express is organising a sumptuous lunch for pensioners and joining with the Pontefract & Castleford Express and Hemsworth & Elmsall Express to lead a Light up a Life event at the Prince of Wales Hospice; the Dewsbury Reporter Series is holding a readers’ community carol concert at the Minster, and the Halifax Courier is running a Song for Christmas campaign that will see videos of primary school Nativity and Christmas carol events posted on the newspaper’s website.
   
• December 2012 – The Ashfield Chad has launched a new community award to praise good deeds. The Ashfield Rose celebrates the achievements of citizens who go that extra mile to make the district a better place to live. First awards went to an 18-year-old girl who raised money for a cancer charity in memory of her best friend’s mum and a trio of caring volunteers who helped set up and run a dementia support group in the area. The initiative, which sees each nominee collect a rose, was made possible after the Chad teamed up with a local florist.
   
• December 2012 – The archives of the Peterborough Telegraph held clues which helped police put a case together to convict a killer who murdered his victim 33 years ago. Staff helped find relevant copies of old newspapers from 1979 when the police reopened the case in 2010. Police officers combed through the papers looking for clues and found several – including a classified advertisement for the sale of the killer’s van just after the murder – which all helped to convict Paul Taylor of Sally McGrath’s murder.
   
• November 2012 – The Fife Free Press staged its biggest ever live show this month – a Hall of Fame night held to raise funds for local football team Raith Rovers. The show was completely sold out (475 seats) and guests included Gordon Strachan, Val McDermid and Archie McPherson, nine inductees and a parade of former club legends. The event was so successful and won so much praise from the community that the paper plans to do it all again in 2013.
   
• November 2012 – The Scotsman holds regular charity book sales, selling off books received for review and any unclaimed competition prizes. They are eagerly anticipated event and always raise a significant amount of money for local causes. This sale in November raised £969 which was donated to a homelessness charity in Edinburgh.
   
• November 2012 - The Yorkshire Post Excellence in Business Awards continue to be a huge event in the business calendar in Leeds and this month's was no exception. The event was slickly organised and packed to capacity. Alistair McGowan was master of ceremonies and Vince Cable the special guest. One guest was overheard saying 'Only the Yorkshire Post could  hold an event like this. It's sorely needed as there are few organisations now who have a remit to promote the whole region. And the Yorkshire Post does it so well.'
   
• October 2012 - The Scarborough News is running an initiative in the wake of the Olympics to inspire young people to take up a sport. The paper's sports reporters are trying a series of sports and writing about them, encouraging people to take part and providing information on how they can join clubs and organisations to do so. The initiative is backed by the town's Olympic co-ordinator.
   
• October 2012 - The Sheffield Star arranged a secret meeting between pop idols JLS and a young girl with a rare bowel condition whose father died suddenly from a heart attack in the summer. She had been playing JLS songs as a way of coping. When the Star learned her story, staff contacted JLS who immediately said they wanted to meet her. The meeting had to be arranged without pre-publicity because the band gets mobbed by fans whenever they appear in public.
   
• September 2012 - It only comes round once every 20 years and there is huge public interest in the Preston Guild so the Lancashire Evening Post pulled out all the stops to provide readers and website visitors with extensive coverage of the event. Staff produced 24-page supplements every day during the week of the Guild and photographers took more than 1,500 pictures, all of which were posted online. Newspaper sales increased as readers enjoyed the photos and reports.
   
• September 2012 - The company supports employees who want to help others and approved a reporter's request for three months' unpaid leave to manage a Raleigh International charity project in India. Jenny Simpson will work with a group of young people in southern India from September to December.
   
• August 2012 - The Olympic Games of course gave us plenty of opportunities to report on the successes of our sporting heroes and newspapers such as The Star, Sheffield were able to focus on such big names as Jessica Ennis as she won her two gold medals. The paper provided comprehensive online live updates and reaction, and saw its website audience soar as visitors searched for the latest news. The Star is now campaigning for the Don Valley Stadium to be renamed in Jessica's honour.
   
• August 2012 - Derry Journal photographer Joe Boland is so involved in his community through scouting activities that he is in the running to be named Community Champion across the whole of Northern Ireland and Ireland. His dedication to Scouting Ireland for the last 20 years - and other community activities - earned him a nomination and he has since been named one of six finalists. A final decision on the winner has yet to be made.
   
• July 2012 - The Boston Standard celebrated its centenary with a range of activities and products that involved much of the community. A commemorative supplement and separate magazine were published; the newspaper held a sell-out variety show for charity; a local butcher created a special sausage; a pub created a special burger, and a bakery came up with a unique '100' biscuit.
   
• July 2012 - The news editor at the Newmarket Journal has been chosen to lead a group aiming to establish a permanent  memorial to a wartime code breaker who was born in the town. Alison Hayes began a campaign in the Journal last year to secure a posthumous honour for Professor Bill Tutte who worked at Bletchley Park. After learning there was no process available, she won the town council's support in working to get a permanent memorial to Prof Tutte established. Her group has already seen interest from national and international organisations.
   
• June 2012 - The Mansfield Chad launched a new appeal to raise £750,000 to help the King's Mill Hospital buy a state-of-the-art MRI scanner. Several thousand pounds were raised with in the first few weeks and the paper's readers have taken the appeal to their heart. The campaign has also won the backing of the MPs for Mansfield and Ashfield.
   
• June 2012 - People in Selkirk love their nostalgia and the Selkirk Advertiser produced a tea towel featuring old photographs from the town. Fifteen black and white pictures formed the centre of the tea towel, with local businesses taking advertisements around the edge. The tea towels were an instant hit with residents.
   
• June 2012 - When the Sheffield Star learned the city council had no plans to hold a civic event to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee it leapt into action and tracked down 11 couples who were celebrating 60 years of marriage this year. A local hotel offered to host an event and an afternoon tea party was organised, much to the delight of the couples who were invited to attend.
   
• May 2012 - Our Yorkshire Food & Drink Show smashed the 2011 attendance figures, attracting a huge 50,000 visitors over the three-day event. The show, delivered by the Yorkshire events team, proved a massive success and created a social networking frenzy over the weekend with lots of positive tweets and posts.
   
• May 2012 - Scottish Cup Final fever swept through Edinburgh when the city's two main clubs, Hibs and Hearts, clashed on May 19. The Edinburgh Evening News captured community spirit perfectly with an amusing video featuring staff singing their own version of the Pet Shop Boys' 1993 hit Go West. The video attracted thousands of views and drew responses from football fans as far away as the US, Australia and New Zealand - as well as Edinburgh itself.
   
• May 2012 - The Hastings Observer prides itself on being at the centre of its community and it extended that role by serving as a polling station in the recent council elections. The council had booked a hotel as a polling station for one ward and was left in the lurch when it closed suddenly. In stepped the Observer - its offices are well known in the town - and voting proceeded as scheduled.
   
• April 2012 - A campaign in the Blackpool Gazette to encourage women to give bras they don't wear to Oxfam resulted in thousands of donations, including some from Gazette staff themselves. Oxfam were delighted, saying very few newspapers in the country had given such support to the campaign. 
   
• April 2012 - The Lancashire Evening Post is a favourite destination for Prime Minister David Cameron - he visited the Preston office for the third time in as many years during a tour of the region. It gave staff at the paper the opportunity to raise the concerns of readers and local businesses and he recorded an interview with the Evening Post's business editor. In recent years the Evening Post has been visited by a number of high profile politicians including Gordon Brown, George Osbourne, Ken Clarke and Ed Balls.
   
• April 2012 - The monthly Hayling Islander is such an important part of life on the island just east of Portsmouth that residents deliver all 11,500 copies themselves free of charge. The island has a population of around 18,000 and more than 200 volunteers deliver the free paper - many taking just a handful to homes either side of their own. The paper is supported by local businesses (mostly independents), including estate agents, and is eagerly anticipated every month. Each year, Johnston Press thanks the volunteers for their efforts with a lunch party at a local hotel.
   
• April 2012 - The Derbyshire Times runs a health awards scheme that allows readers to vote for a community group they would like to see receive funding. Shortlisted projects are put forward for a readers' vote and hundreds were cast in the latest round. The winner was a bereavement support group, the Village Friends, which now has £3,500 to invest in its work.
   
• April 2012 - Isle of Man Newspapers launched an appeal earlier in the year to raise enough funds to eradicate a waiting list for children requiring pump therapy for Type 1 diabetes. The newspapers set themselves the target of raising the necessary £20,000 by Christmas but reached the total in just six weeks. Now staff have decided to keep going with the aim of ensuring no child will ever have to wait for a pump in the future.
   
• March 2012  - The Shields Gazette reported on its front page that a terminally ill young father needed £33,500 to pay for life-prolonging treatment. Within an hour one reader had stepped forward to donate the whole amount.
   
• March 2012 - For the second year we ran an offer of a ‘£10 holiday for every reader’ across many of our markets. Thousands of readers responded and we recorded a 54% increase in year-on-year bookings
   
• March 2012 - Our former press hall at the Northampton & Chronicle Echo is to be transformed into a stage for the city’s Royal & Derngate Theatre. It will be the venue for 22 performances of a show, The Bacchae by Euripides, which has been chosen to feature in the London 2012 Festival celebrating The Olympics.
   
• February 2012 - One of our photographers has undergone training with the East Anglian Air Ambulance so that he can fly with the Helicopter Emergency Service as an ‘embedded journalist’. It will allow the Peterborough Evening Telegraph to give readers a remarkable first-hand insight into the work of the charity and raise much-needed awareness.
   
• February 2012 - Many of our publications are reaching landmark anniversaries – and people in the communities are keen to share in the celebrations. When the Burnley Express celebrated 125 years as a bi-weekly newspaper, a local brewery created a special real ale – Brewer’s Scoop – and a butcher devised a peppery sausage called Hot off the Press which flew off his counter.