The inception of the Global Majority Collective - Here's how we did it

In creating safe space for black students and students of colour to discuss issues of racism and anti racism to be part of a collective and use the group as a form of action, the Global Majority Collective has been formed and today exists as a thriving student group, but this wasn't always the case. Through my leadership drawing on models of community engagement and my background of persistence and empowerment developed through a 20 year career of Assertive Outreach the group has maintained itself to it's success of today. 


The group started as a 'Black students support group' around 20 years ago, and folded, and was re injected with life when funds were successfully secured in my cluster from a teaching and learning project to  evidence the support needs of our students from BME backgrounds that resulted in this paper being published.

Bunce, L, King, N, Talib, N & Saran, S (2019) Experiences of black and minority ethnic (BME) students in higher education: applying self-determination theory to understand the BME attainment gap. Studies in Higher Education. Volume 46. Issue 3. Pp 534-547.

The research outlined the need of the vital importance of the group and the Global Majority Collective was formed. After drawing on previous service user engagement expertise I realised that part of the key to to it's survival was to fund the leadership of the group. This along with the fact that our team strategy of 'creating a place to inhabit' together with the principle of 'Ubuntu' 'I am because we are' gave strength and a focus to the value of collectivism that have been the main factors that have enabled the group to thrive.

The group has worked on acting as critical friends to our programme extending this work into the reverse mentoring and in particular have helped us to implement 'The Mandela model' into our provision as a n overarching practical solution of how to get anti racist pedagogy embedded and credible.

(Tedam, P. (2013). The MANDELA model of practice learning. The Journal of Practice Teaching and Learning, 11(2), 60-76. https://doi.org/10.1921/jpts.v11i2.264).


More on my experiences of reverse mentoring and the implementation of the Mandela Model in upcoming posts....





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