Developing student leaders from racialised backgrounds to tackle health inequalities
£15,000 was donated in April 2025 to Student Minds to run a pilot project empowering students in leadership roles (including students’ union officers and student society leaders) from racialised backgrounds to address health inequalities on their campus. This was delivered nationally online and aimed to improve their community’s wellbeing.
What did the project do?
Community organising training with an expert facilitator from Citizens UK
This ‘introduction to community organising’ session covered what community organising is, and how to organise for social change. The training explored the key concepts of power, self-interest and leadership, and gave students the skills and knowledge to work through the ‘5 steps to social change’.
Training from ‘Make Diversity Count’
This training explored (1) understanding of the current experiences of racialised students in higher education and (2) work and initiatives undertaken to address how universities support racialised students. The goal was to increase knowledge and confidence in creating change around the experiences of racialised students in higher education.
Support, resources and coaching
A member of Student Minds staff offered 1-1 calls during the project to provide a point of contact, information about the project and Student Minds, and to share resources.
Key feedback from participants
Following the training sessions, participants said they felt ‘empowered’, ‘informed’, ‘enthused’ and ‘motivated’. One attendee highlighted how the interactive nature of the sessions provided space for a fellow student who is often quiet to make contributions, and how powerful the contributions he made were – highlighting the increase in confidence.
Another participant also reflected on the importance of being provided with a space to discuss issues that they don’t often get the opportunity to talk about with those from other institutions. They said it was, “useful to be able to vocalise my experience as an officer attending different meetings where I am usually the only one that looks like me. I was able to ask questions around microaggressions as a working professional and confront my comfortability with discussions around race.”
A student’s perspective
One participant shared,
“I really enjoyed sessions and I felt they were useful and inspiring. The community organising session was great as I learnt a lot about an unfamiliar topic and felt the examples Tom [from Citizens UK] provided were interesting and helped to envision real-world applications. Osaro’s session [Make Diversity Count] was great as it had a lot of her relatable personal experiences and showed her journey from noticing an issue to creating an impact. Both sessions were very interactive, so I was interested the whole time, which meant the online format worked well.
Thank you so much for the opportunity I have learnt a lot!”
Student Minds report on lessons learnt
The student leaders who participated developed skills and confidence to advocate for themselves and peers that they can apply to a range of situations during current roles and beyond. They reflected feeling inspired and motivated to act, with ‘applicable’ ideas shared.
Student Minds reflect that they now have a greater understanding of the challenges students from racialised communities face when trying to influence decision-making and the impact on their wellbeing. These insights will inform developments across their work, helping them deliver their commitment to keep equity at the centre of everything they do.