A Movement
Not a Moment.
Our Roots
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Baobab is a Black-led funder and community organiser driven by over 1,000 Black and Global Majority members living in the UK. Our values are rooted in collective leadership, our commitment to centring disability justice and our dedication to empowering organisations and individuals dismantling racial injustice.
Like the tree we’re named after, Baobab exists to resource, root and ground Black and Global Majority communities while we fight to dismantle systemic racism. Our principles are Unity, Justice and Freedom and we strive to redistribute wealth to our oppressed communities, who work so hard to bring us further to these principles becoming our shared realities.
We carry out our resourcing and community organising work in order to facilitate equitable landscapes in which Unity, Justice and Freedom can be planted deeply enough to grow the life-affirming futures our communities need.
Our journey is marked by our dedication to decolonial working practices and striving to embed Disability Justice more deeply throughout every aspect of our work.
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Baobab was born from a gathering of people from Black and other Global Majority communities who formed Baobab’s first Steering Group (this included Jake Ferguson, David Weaver, Julie Hutchinson, Marai Larasi, Derek Bardowell, Jeremy Crook, Nusrat Faizullah, Sado Jirde, Viv Ahmun, Jenny Oppenheimer, Dilhani Wijeyesekera, Joe Ferns and Jermain Jackman). The gathering was formed in response to the Black resilience movements in the UK, particularly in the wave of uprisings against police brutality in 2020.
The group drew upon intersectional and Black feminist approaches for the formation of Baobab and over 30 initial members from local organisations and communities signed up across the UK.
Today we continue to mobilise resources from trusts, foundations, and businesses to radically subvert histories of underfunding, marginalisation, and anti-Blackness affecting UK Black and Global Majority communities.
Our journey is marked by collective celebrations of our power, creativity and joy. Our learning is built on the foundation of Black Feminist teachings from fellow funding organisations such as Project Tallawah and our commitment to centering disability justice; ensuring no one is left behind on our collective journey to Unity, Justice and Freedom.
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2020 was a traumatic awakening of white consciousness. Peaks of global attention around our long-standing lived experiences of systemic anti-Blackness, including police brutality and disproportionate healthcare inequality were suddenly unignorable in society in the middle of a global standstill enforced by the pandemic. The longstanding neglect of Black-led organisations at the hands of deep-rooted racist infrastructures were finally confronted, with the shifting of financial resources from institutions grown from legacies of slavery and white supremacy.
Baobab emerged as a result of this financial shifting — we were formed by a group of Black and Global Majority activists who were determined to capture this shifting and shape it into a seed for a long-term life-sustaining infrastructure. Baobab is the dream of a Black-led ecosystem powerful enough to bring about material change for the benefit of Black and Global Majority communities.
A Radical Community
We are a movement of over 1,000 Black and Global Majority members, activists, creatives, and grassroots leaders dedicated to dismantling systemic racism together.
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In 2023, Lankelly Chase became a Solidarity Partner with Baobab through their £8 million pound donation to Baobab as an endowment. This vital donation pushes us further towards our vision of becoming a long-term sustainable resource for our communities independent from funders whose racial and economic history are steeped in oppressive white infrastructures.
Our vision is to grow this endowment in order to provide a sustainable container to combat histories of anti-black socio-economic disempowerment. This dream cannot happen in isolation. We need the radical accountability, commitment and support of other Solidarity Partners divesting from inequitable power models towards long-term communally-empowered resourcing.
Baobab’s Project Team and Trustees work to serve our Baobab Members and wider community by facilitating wealth redistribution and solidarity through solidified organising to subvert histories of inequality and disempowerment within the funding world and wider society.
We are guided by the 10 principles of Disability Justice, decolonial practices and horizontal/ non-hierarchical power structures as we carry out this work. Our member’s voices shape the organisation, our direction, our work and our vision, making Baobab a unique and community-led funder, dedicated to the communities we serve.
Baobab Project Team
Amber —
Operations Manager
Apiigy —
Finance Lead
Aris —
Fund Administrator
Jermain —
Membership Lead
Paulette —
Fund Lead
Rehana —
Fund Lead
Theophina —
Comms & Engagement Lead
Tian —
Administrative Lead
Tumu —
Disability Justice Lead
Uchechi —
Resourcing Lead
Baobab Trustees
*Baobab Trustees are split across two sides of Baobab. This is because we are a dual-structure Community Benefit Society (Bencom). Our unique structure, suggested by our Baobab Members, ensures that one side of the organisation can carry out our charitable aims (Funding) while the other side can carry out resourcing activities in line with our communal aims (Foundation).
Chupa —
Funding & Foundation
Vanessa —
Funding & Foundation
Deepak —
Funding
Jake —
Funding
Amy —
Foundation
Saadia —
Foundation
‘We Give Thanks & Gratitude to Our Ancestors For Their Knowledge and Strength’
— The Baobab Foundation
Rooted in resistance,
growing our liberation.
The resilient Baobab tree houses a massive system of roots that can slow erosion and keep the condition of the soil sustainable enough to grow life. In the spirit of this powerful tree, Baobab is growing collective movements in intolerable climates in order to grow futures filled with racial justice.
