EDITORIAL BOARD

The Editorial Board consist of seven members who have been drawn together because of their variety of skills, and their qualification to represent the users of this site as follows:

Dr Cheron Byfield

Cheron, a Co-founder and Chairperson of the National Black Boys Can Association, is a visionary and strategic leader who has used her entrepreneurial skills, flair and talent to develop this innovative web-based resource for Black pupils.  Her varied and rich career has included lecturing, both in colleges and universities, working at management and senior management levels in Personnel, Training and Development, and Enterprise, in the private, public and community sectors.  Cheron, a practising Christian, has a BA in economic history, an M.Sc in Personnel Management and an MBA (with distinction).  In addition, she undertook her doctorate degree at the University of Oxford, where she undertook and international research study into the educational achievement of black boys in the UK and USA who have been successful in accessing higher education. Her study is of relevance to all those who are committed to raising the attainment of Black boys including:  schools, widening participation personnel in further education and higher education institutions, education policy makers, community activists, parents and Black male youths themselves.

                                                       ------------------------*------------------------ 

Dr Richard Majors

Dr Richard Majors is a former visiting Leverhulme scholar at Manchester University. Currently as an educational psychologist, he is involved in doing research and conducting workshops in the area of emotional literacy and social inclusion in various schools and colleges. Dr Majors has also carried out extensive research in the USA and the UK on race, class and gender. He is founder of the journal of African American Studies (formerly, the Journal of African American Men).
A former Harvard Medical School Clinical Fellow, Dr Majors has met with members of the Clinton Administration to discuss youth policy and his work on males and race in the US, was submitted by the publisher for a Pulitzer Prize. Within the UK, he has been involved with the Government on a range of initiatives and was a member of the Ministerial Educational Task Force on Social Inclusion.Dr Majors has written a number of books on the black male. His most recent book is Educating our Black Children: New Directions and Radical Approaches, Routledge/Flamer, 2001. Other titles include Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America, Richard Majors and Janet Mancini Billson.

                                                        -----------------------*-------------------------

Sam Duru

Sam Duru brings a wealth of experience of working with Ethnic Minority Communities, having worked in this arena for many years. He has managed various mentoring projects, including a Home Office funded programme in Walsall. He has an acumen towards business and has taught its concepts as a lecturer in several Further Education facilities.  He is the Director of the Wolverhampton BME Community Council, a Business Link Advisor and he sits as chair on various steering and working groups and committees.  He is also a diocese member of the Church of England Board of Finance Lay Assessors Panel.

                                                       ------------------------*-------------------------

Veron Graham

Veron Graham is a Birmingham-born journalist, photographer and marketer whose work has been featured in the local, regional and the national media. Born with a love for writing, he first showed an interest in journalism at 8 years of age. Beginning as the official match reporter for his junior school football team, Veron went on to write for a series of community publications as a youth. After qualifying as a journalist, he has worked on a number of mainstream and specialist publications including The Voice, The Birmingham Mail, Press Gazette and Direction Magazine. A committed Christian, Veron has also worked as a researcher/reporter for BBC radio, television and online, The Salvation Army’s Communications Manager and is a former press officer at the Learning & Skills Council. Veron has frequently reported on educational issues over the last decade and is founder of The Grahamedia Agency (www.GMAgency.co.uk), a multi-discipline organization which offers journalistic, photographic and PR services plus media/ personal development training. He is keen to see a continued improvement in the achievement and aspirations of Black pupils and believes blackpupils.com has a key role to play in this regard.

                                                      -------------------------*-------------------------

Gilroy Brown Cert Ed BA

Comes to the Board with 30 years experience in Education, 10 of those as a Headmaster of a multi-cultural inner city primary school. He now serves as a School advisor for the Birmingham Advisory and Support Services and has done extensive research on successful school practices in raising the achievement of African Caribbean pupils. He has also sat on the DfES working party, which looked at ‘Successful Strategies for Raising the Achievement of Minority Ethnic Pupils’ and is currently a DfES consultant for the ‘Aiming High’ pilot project. He has presented before several Head-Teacher conferences working closely with senior management auditing school practices and devising action plans.

                                                     --------------------------*--------------------------

Rev Carver Anderson DIPSW/CQSW Dip (Theo) MA

Carver Anderson is the Managing Director of Shalom Consultancy, a national organisation that empowers families and youths through mediation, counselling, training and consultancy. He and his wife Pauline are involved in a number of community projects and partnerships, which has helped to transform not only individuals, but communities. Carver sits as chair on the Bringing Hope Project, which is a positive action initiative, presenting the churches active response to guns, drugs, knives and gangs.       
He has extensively travelled and taught throughout South Africa, Jamaica, Europe, USA, West Central Africa and across the UK and as a former Director of Youth and Christian Education for the second largest black led church, New Testament Church Of God (England and Wales), he oversaw the development of education and social programmes. He is presently in the last year of his PHD in Theology at the University of Birmingham.

                                                    ---------------------------*--------------------------

Hadja Wurie BSc, MSc

Hadja, a graduate from the University of Liverpool with a degree in Biochemistry and also from the University of Wolverhampton with an MSc in Biomedical Sciences, currently works as a laboratory technician at a secondary school, where amongst other things she is responsible for preparing CASE (Cognitive Acceleration Through Science Education) lessons for pupils and also for upgrading scientific IT packages. Hadja strongly believes that children should be actively involved in extracurricular activities, as indeed, she was when she was at school. Hadja was the representative at an international science camp in Alabama, USA, in 1996;  she achieved a Certificate of Merit from The Daily Telegraph BASF Young Science Writer Awards 1998 for the work she submitted on the impact of the discovery of DNA fingerprinting; she participated in the Model United Nations Conference 2000 in London where she proposed a resolution on the rights of a child and she was a member of the Liverpool Student Community Action, an independent registered charity established to promote any charitable purpose for the benefit of the community in the Merseyside area, in particular the advancement of education and the relief of poverty and distress and sickness. Hadja is a committed volunteer at Coventry Black Boys Can where she teaches maths and IT to the boys and ‘Computers for Beginners’ to Parents

JUNIOR EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

EDITORIAL STAFF TEAM