Brian Seremba is at the forefront of reshaping British Columbia’s education system. In 2019, the community leader co-founded the BC Community Alliance to address structural racism in educational institutions. The data-driven Black-led non-profit has advocated for anti-racism training, a comprehensive K-12 provincial curriculum showcasing Canadian Black history, and Black youth empowerment through a free mentorship program.
Genesis We got started out of a crisis in our community following a racist bomb threat at Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver. We weren’t thinking we needed to start an organization. We wanted to look at what community members were telling us and how we could address the issues they raised.
Need Our students told us that the challenges they were facing were a lack of opportunities or awareness of where these opportunities are. Our pilot after-school mentorship program exposes them to topics on financial literacy, mental health and career readiness. We don’t want to limit the possibilities of our students. They want to feel seen. They want to feel heard.
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Community We were empowered by our community. Black people coming together from all walks of life — that’s what makes up the BC Community Alliance. Because of this unique composition of people, we’ve been able to move the needle quicker than if we would have done this in our silos.
Impact We’ve stayed true to our mission. We’ve seen the impact on the youths’ lives through our programs and the legislative changes that have also taken place in the last five years. We were involved in the 2022 Anti-Racism Data Act, for example, which gives agencies the power to collect race-based data to better improve programs and services. Change takes time, and we want to be an organization that is going to work on our mission year after year.
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Jasmine Mahoro is a writer living in Toronto.
This article first appeared in Broadview’s January/February 2025 issue with the title “Brian Seremba.”
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