Supporting Maia Thomas Equality Activist

My name is Maia Thomas, I am a 21 year old student, Equality activist and international speaker. 

After speaking at a Zoom meeting yesterday I was asked if there is a platform where people can donate to me personally to allow me to continue my activism across the UK so I have created this.

I would like to fundraise to help me organise further events, elevate black and minority voices in our community, buy resources to continue educating others, allow me to travel across the UK to go into various schools which want to work with me, organise future protests and educational activities and more.  

A few people have asked how they can donate to support me in my work so I have set this up for that. I will continue to devote my time and energy to campaigning for equality somy generation and future generations do not have to continue suffering and being made to feel uncomfortable for being themselves. 

Living in Devon I grew up not being accepted based on the colour of my skin. I felt excluded from different communities across Devon and felt the need to change my identity to fit into a society which I would inevitably be at a disadvantage based on the colour of my skin. Despite this, I want to prove to black and other minority individuals that you can still achieve, speak out against what it wrong and that our voices will be heard by society.  I will never use my skin colour as an excuse to not achieve but instead use it to motivate me to push myself more and more everyday.

So far through my work as an activist I have have been contacted by over 30 schools which I am going in to conduct workshops on diversity and multiculturalism and work closely with them to get black history in the curriculum. I have organised/co organised various protests across Devon (one with over 1000 attending), worked with ITV on written articles and tv appearances, I am on the diversity and inclusion panel for ITV, written for various online forums such as public reading rooms and newspapers. I have done a podcast with radio exe, been invited to an international conference and have so much more I hope to achieve in the future.

Any donations would be amazing and it’s for a great cause. I want to be able to continue to do as much work as I can in Devon and beyond and this would be a great support. I am so thankful for all the emotional and physical support I have received so far.

This is a movement not a moment.


More of my story:
Growing up as a black woman in a predominantly white and rural area has always been challenging. For me Black Lives Matter is not just a movement to join one day and forget about the next. It is not a trend or an idea that should be prominent one day and then hidden the next. I moved to Devon when I was about nine years old. When you first mention Devon to someone often their response is joyful, highlighting the sense of community you feel across the county. In the small towns people often greet each other with a simple smile or ‘hello’ but imagine seeing this around you but never being included due to the colour of your skin. Being excluded is what I have had to deal with throughout my life, not only in towns but in schools, shops and many other areas.

My school experience was a memory that I have struggled to face at times as this highlights exclusion in an area no one should ever feel excluded, education. Everyone is entitled to an education and I for one was an extremely bright and willing student. However, no matter how bright or passionate I was about my education this was not reflected in how I was treated. Many schools in Devon I attended would constantly question my hair. My natural hair is afro hair, and this was always an issue with schools. They did not want me to have my natural hair out as it ‘failed to comply with school rules’. Furthermore, they did not want me to have an alternative style, braids, as there was no space for this in their institutional rules either. The right to education should not be affected by my natural hair style but I was constantly questioned and ridiculed to the point I began changing my identity just to fit in and not be noticed constantly for the ‘wrong reasons’. In addition, food was thrown at me on multiple occasions by younger pupils while they shouted, ‘feed the African’ and ‘feed the slave’. The school’s response was to simply not allow them on the school trip rather than choosing to educate the pupils as to why their actions were racist and unacceptable.

School was only the beginning of a long journey ahead. Often in my everyday life I am told I am ‘outspoken’, ‘too confident’, ‘too loud’ and often ‘aggressive’, simply for having an opinion. I am constantly reminded of the fact that ‘I am well-spoken for a black woman’ or even when organising the Black Lives Matter protest in Exeter that I should ‘use my looks’ as I am ‘pretty for a black girl’ so that would get my message across better.

This highlights a fraction of the reason why I chose to co organise a Black Lives Matter protest in Exeter as a young black woman. I wanted to create a space for black and other ethnic minority individuals to feel safe and have their voices heard. I struggled to speak out for a large period of my lifetime, and I do not want this to be the case for anyone else. I wanted to create a platform to celebrate black individuals as although I have been through various challenges and suffered from racial abuse, I never let this get in the way of me thriving and achieving.