Emily Campbell believes giving back to the community that supported her Olympic dreams is more important than winning another medal in Paris.

The 29-year-old became Britain’s first female Olympic medallist in weightlifting when she claimed silver in the +87 kilograms category in Tokyo in 2021.

She will bid for more success in Paris this summer, but Campbell is just as excited about the new ChangeMaker initiative, which will see Olympic and Paralympic stars get involved in local community causes in the two weeks after their respective Games.

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The programme is a partnership between The National Lottery’s operator, Allwyn, Team GB, ParalympicsGB and UK Sport, and Campbell told the PA news agency: “We’re going to use the amazing momentum and excitement and buzz from the Games to motivate athletes to go back into their community and to do anything that they’re really passionate about.

“It could be to do with sport, it could be to do with environment, whatever they feel they can make a difference in. It’s all really, really exciting.”

Campbell’s success is very much rooted in the Nottinghamshire town of Bulwell where she grew up, and she admits she is “torn” about which project she will support.

“There’s a lot of good things going on and it’s probably going to be hard for me to pick but I’ll probably just be out there trying to help as many as I can,” she said.

“Everyone says it takes a village to raise a child, right, and it takes a community to make an Olympic medallist. That’s what my community did for me, from giving me free fruit and veg to supporting me when I was trying to raise money, the cobbler fixing my boots, the list goes on and on and on.

“Everybody goes to the Olympics and everybody wants a medal but for me now it’s more about giving back and being a part of something that actually means something.

“Instead of sitting there and saying ‘I’m an inspiration and I want to be a role model’, it’s about putting your money where your mouth is and getting it done. And you never know, we might find another little Olympic champion somewhere.”

Campbell’s dream of opening a gym in Nottingham focused on youth and development will have to wait until after her career is over, and there will be many more medals still to come if she can maintain the consistency she has shown since Tokyo.

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Silver and bronze medals have followed at world level while she has won the European title for four years in a row and Commonwealth gold on home soil in Birmingham in 2022.

Having a platform has enabled Campbell not just to recognise the support given to her but to “shout” about a linked passion, showing women and girls that sport and exercise is for everyone and changing perceptions of what healthy looks like.

Three years on from her Olympic breakthrough, Campbell is encouraged but not satisfied, saying: “We’re getting there. I wouldn’t say that it’s completely changed, I wouldn’t say we’re where we need to be but people hopefully are listening – I’ve definitely shouted enough about it.

“You are seeing now a lot more of an inclusive space within the fitness industry. Brands are starting to do the right thing. This all filters back down to what our young people see. They want to see people that represent them, that look like them, and that encourages them to get involved.

“It’s always going to be an ongoing battle and, as long as I’ve got a voice and people can hear me, I’m going to shout about it.”

Campbell is made aware of the impact her words and actions have every day through messages and interactions, and she said: “It’s actually overwhelming sometimes. I want to say I do see everything that comes into my inbox but as you can imagine it is (busy) in there.

“The amount of people that have said they’ve started lifting, or they’ve lost X amount of weight or they’ve started doing a certain dance class, or they’ve just done something that they feel has made a positive impact on their life.

“People do stop me in the street as well, it’s absolutely amazing and I can’t thank everybody enough for the support.”

Emily Campbell’s rapidly-expanding medal collection bears testament to the realisation of the “crazy and bonkers” dream she once shared only with her family and a few market traders in her home town of Bulwell, who fuelled her Olympic ambitions with a regular supply of free fruit and veg.

Handsomely repaid for their faith when Campbell returned from Tokyo with an historic silver medal and copious bottles of bubbly, the 29-year-old’s staunchest supporters are now accustomed to news of her trailblazing success in weightlifting competitions across the globe.

Campbell was the first British woman to win an Olympic medal in the sport, an achievement that almost single-handedly shifted its perception, leading to packed stands and back-page headlines when she went on to win Commonwealth Games gold in a raucous National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham last year.

“I always believed that I could do amazing things in the sport, even though people kept telling me that it wasn’t possible,” Campbell, whose hopes of adding another World Championship medal to her collection in Saudi Arabia last week were scuppered by a back injury, told the PA news agency.

“The Olympic medal was me proving that I wasn’t crazy and bonkers, that I could back up the things I’d been saying, that I believed in myself and my team, and it hadn’t been just some sort of pipe dream that we’d been throwing in the air.

“The Olympics was about saying to the world, ‘This is me and this is what I do’. The Commonwealths were about cementing it, proving it wasn’t a fluke that I’d got an Olympic medal, that I won it because I went out there and was good enough to win it.”

Competing in the +87kg super-heavyweight category, Campbell has never sought to disguise the significance of her success in the context of ongoing body image issues among young girls, stressing its importance even before she had her silver medal wrapped around her neck in Tokyo.

She admits she is still moved close to tears by frequent reminders from young girls and their mothers of the impact she has had on shifting those perceptions, and highlighting the opportunities for those who wish to follow less conventional paths to fitness and potential sporting glory.

“My message has always been about changing that narrative that says as women it’s all about our appearance, and that sport and lifting can empower you and help you make decisions in life that are more important than how we look and what we wear and how our hair is and what weight we are,” added Campbell.

“I appreciate that I can do some good in terms of using my position to inspire people to do whatever makes them happy. I am a private person and I sometimes find the whole celebrity thing a little overwhelming, but I know it is a privilege to be in the position I am in, and I feel like I am helping to make a change.”

Campbell won a silver medal at last year’s World Championships in Colombia and, despite having made a return from planned knee surgery in January, a minor back injury prompted her decision to withdraw from Riyadh and focus on what she calls the “bigger picture” of Paris 2024.

An upgrade to gold will almost certainly prove a lift too far for Campbell, given the dominance in the category of China’s remarkable Li Wenwen, a softly-spoken 23-year-old who routinely totals over 30kg more than her super-heavyweight rivals and is acknowledged, even by the likes of the defiant Campbell, as a class apart.

“She (Li) has a very good aura and energy about her and we are all in awe of her because of what she has managed to achieve at her age,” admitted Campbell. “But it has always been about me and not everybody else.

“I’ve always had a tick-list of things I wanted to do in the sport and my long-term plan was always to get a medal in Paris. I’d only been in the sport for five years when I went to Tokyo, so it did seem unrealistic to plan to win a medal at the first attempt.

“Obviously a few things have changed. I’m accustomed to bringing home some bling now, and I’ve got a bit of a target on my back because the other girls want to beat me.

“But when I come home I still pop down to the market to keep them updated because they were there when I really needed help and support and people to believe in me.

“I still take my boots to the same guy to get mended, and they still look after me with the fruit and veg. (In May) I cut the ribbon to open the new bus station, where I used to get my buses to school or athletics practice. I’m just happy that I’ve helped bring something positive to the place I’m from.”