Donegal native Annette is proud to be leading Moy Valley Resources

Annette Maughan is a busy woman. As chief executive officer of Moy Valley Resources, based in Ballina, there are literally a million and one different things going on in her working life. Yet you cannot help but be enthused by her attitude to what she does. Annette clearly loves her job – she is passionate about improving things for people in the Moy Valley region and beyond.

It’s true to say that Annette’s time in Moy Valley began by chance. Were it not for a recession impacting her landscaping business, this might not have been her career path.

One thing is obvious, as we sit in the Moy Valley offices to do the interview, if Annette had not followed this path, it would have been a loss to entire region.

Angelina: Annette, thanks for talking to me. Tell me a little about yourself.

Annette: I’m a Donegal woman from a little place called Termon, which is just north of Letterkenny. I grew up in a family of nine. I grew up on a small farm and loved the outdoors. When I was finishing school and thinking about what to do, I loved farming and all that outdoor stuff. I didn't want a job that was seven days a week, 365 days a year, so I went down the horticulture route instead. I went off to college and did the degree in agricultural science, but specialised in landscape horticulture and did that through UCD. Then I came out of college after four years and went, 'Oh, crikey, I hate all that indoor stuff, I need to get back outdoors again'. I took a gardening job in Donegal Town, then I went to Glenveagh National Park, and then I came to Mayo to be the head gardener at Enniscoe House.

Angelina: So when you were in Enniscoe, you were expecting your fourth child?

Annette: Yes, we had four children in the space of about six years. I was in a full-time job that was very physical. So I stepped back a little bit from the gardening and went part-time in Enniscoe and then set up my own business as well. I set up AM Landscapes and that was a landscape design, consultancy, and training business. 

I was doing work with schools. I'd go into schools and help them do a nature garden and plant trees and plant hedging, and talk to the kids about the importance of the outdoors and all of that. I would have also done talks for gardening clubs. 

Then on the other side, I was doing landscape assessments for planning developments and for housing estates or for nursing homes - for big developments here in the West of Ireland, where landscape assessments had to be carried out as part of their planning permissions. 

Eventually, I left the garden altogether and went into the business full time. And then 2008 came, and that was the end of the landscape design business, because that was really a luxury for people.. My phone stopped ringing throughout the course of 2008 and into 2009. I just had bits and pieces of work during that time. 

Then my youngest started school in September 2010. About a month after he started school, one of my sisters in Donegal rang to say, 'Annette, did you see there's a community employment supervisor's job going in Ballina?' I had been a community employment supervisor in Donegal Town. So I had done the training, and she knew it, and she saw the ad. I looked at it and I said, 'Oh yeah. But it's not gardening, it's an office job.' And she said, 'If you're looking for something, why don't you apply anyway?' And the rest is history, because it was with Moy Valley Resources for their community employment scheme. And I interviewed for that job and got it. And 12 years later, here I am as the CEO.

Angelina: How did you feel when you got that job - it was very different for you.

Annette: I knew I needed to do something. I couldn't be at home all the time. I thought, I'll apply, and it'll be an interview if nothing else. I never really thought I'd get it, but I did. I think I'm an adaptable person anyway. 

When I came into Moy Valley, we had a scheme with about 20 or so people on it. I started with growing that scheme, and eventually we got that scheme up to today's figure, where we now have over 40 people on it. And then when I was here working as a CE supervisor, I took on operations management as well for the company. I kind of became the focal point within the organisation, for all the managers, for all the different projects that we run, I was their point of contact. I was overseeing the property side with the caretakers and dealing very closely with the CEO at the time. 

So I was seeing the organisation from all sides, and doing the operations and working with the staff who were then carrying out all the work on the ground for the company. And when the CEO vacancy arose a couple of years ago, I was asked if I'd like to take it on in an acting role first to see how it would go, and I did that for a couple of months and then took on the full role. So I've been CEO since 2019.

Angelina: How would you describe the work that Moy Valley Resources does?

Annette: The company itself is a voluntary-led organisation. There's a voluntary board of directors who oversee the company. Then I work as the CEO to take their vision and their strategy and put that into place in terms of running our projects and programmes and taking on new projects and programmes. All of which are about community development, and that's a very, very broad term. 

Community development is anything that will add value to living in, working in or visiting the region. Most of our projects are based within the North Mayo area and what we call the Moy Valley region, which goes from Foxford up to Ballycastle, and Belderrig in the west, and over as far as West Sligo. We take in quite a big area, but then we also run the Mayo Volunteer Centre, which is a countywide project. 

Through the volunteer centre, we're encouraging people to get involved in volunteering and helping them to match those people with the needs of organisations that require volunteers. We also run the Mayo North Promotions Office, which is a tourism-focused project. That is all about promoting and marketing the North Mayo region as a destination, rather than small areas and small businesses trying to do that on their own, bringing them together under one umbrella and marketing Mayo North. And that's been really successful. That's ten years in operation now. 

We run the Over 55s Club, which is now called Craoibhín Ballina. That's a social inclusion project. We're aiming that at older people living in the region who maybe don't have family around them anymore, who may feel somewhat isolated, maybe living a bit more rurally than they'd like and can't get into town as often. We provide a bus service to help bring people into town to attend events, maybe to go and do their shopping. We put on lots of activities, entertainment, social occasions for people. So they get to come in and mingle and mix and have company throughout the day. 

And then we have a community employment scheme. That's all about bringing people who've been long-term unemployed, at least one year unemployed, into work for 19 and a half hours a week. They either are placed with us here in Moy Valley Resources in the various locations we have, or out with one of our main sub-sponsors. We provide supports into the Chamber of Commerce in Ballina - we provide them with additional staff to help run their office. We provide staff to Suífinn Way in Ballycastle to help with their Meals on Wheels service. We send staff to Lacken Enterprise Centre to help with maintenance and ongoing upkeep of their facility. Our scheme is very broad, and it supports the wider region while giving those people the opportunity to get back into work, build up some skills, do some training, and hopefully move on to employment after their scheme.

Angelina: And then you support people individually as well?

Annette: We support people with LEADER applications and things like that. But then we do a lot more stuff on the ground. I’ve outlined our core projects but there's all of the other stuff which is just supporting individuals on a day-to-day basis. I could get an email from somebody saying, 'Annette, I'm looking for a kitchen to start a new business from. Are there any kitchens in the area?' I could get a call from a community organisation saying, 'We were applying for funding, but we're stuck with this part of it.' And we'd help them with the funding application. We try to provide the support as and where we can to the broad community so that everybody benefits us. It's a grassroots, bottom-up approach. It's about getting that help out into the grassroots of all the communities, and if we can support them, we support them. If not, we might just signpost them.

Angelina: What keeps you driven, Annette?

Annette: I have four children, first and foremost, and you want them to grow up and live in a place that they can be proud of, a place that they can afford to live in, a place where there will be job opportunities for them. And, of course, my kids are nearly reared now, the last one is in Leaving Cert. But all of their friends, all of those families that we know, they all deserve that opportunity to be able to stay where they are and live where they are. I think that's probably been one of the primary drivers of it. 

But the other thing is, I think when you work for a not-for-profit organisation, it's a very different reward system that you get. You're not working for money, really, you're not working for profit. You're concentrating on the outcomes. You're concentrating on the impact, and that's far more powerful than anything. There's that sense of satisfaction that what you're doing, there's nothing really selfish about it. It's very much about the community. It's about the people and the region and the area. Maybe it's just natural that I fall into that category of people, rather than a career-driven, money mindset or something. So I just sit very easily with it, and I love what I do.