A group of teachers with the Greater Essex County District School Board have formed a group with a goal of combating anti-Black racism while creating change within the education system.
Through a partnership between the board and the Ontario Secondary School Teacher's Federation, the Black Staff Equity Alliance will hold its inaugural meeting Wednesday, March 3.
The group was founded by Amina Abdulle, Dr. Venus Olla and Natalie and Shantelle Browning-Morgan.
Abdulle says the board was happy to partner with group.
"The board is providing us the space to speak. So it's a really lively partnership to work together to create really good opportunities for discussing, elevating and putting forth issues that deal with anti-Black racism," she says.
Abdulle says the alliance will compliment what the board is already doing to fight racism.
"We already have really great programming within our board, but BSEA's objective is to create an opportunity for a more unified voice for Black identified people and their allies working towards creating opportunities for students and for all staff," she says.
The group is open to any and all staff within the public school board.
Abdulle says the aim to is have one place to gather ideas.
"We just realized that having, especially Black identified women as ourselves, working in partnership to centre a lot of the concerns and ideas and initiatives that we have will better further us along in making the substantive changes that we want to make," she adds.
Those interested in attending Wednesday's meeting must register by Tuesday by emailing Abdulle at amina.abdulle@publicboard.ca.