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 Join or support the network at: www.excludedfromschool.com

Serving as a trustee for this inspirational organisation, concerned at the continuing escalation of self-destructive and anti-social behaviour among young men from every section of society, with recognition that any meaningful and sustainable solution entails the reclamation of shared local responsibility. I endeavour to bring the voice of young men between the ages of 18-25 who are involved with or at risk of being involved with the criminal justice system, to the board of trustees.

I also regularly volunteer and staff ‘rites of passage’ weekends for young men and trainee mentors. It was at one of these very weekends where I was able to inhabit the deep sense of shame within me, internalised racism and self-loathing, leaving it all behind and stepping into a new manhood.

Find out more at: https://abandofbrothers.org.uk

Healthy Warriors has been created to help men come together and train their anger to serve them. A man who does not harness their anger, picks a fight with everyone and about everything; his relationships fail and he is delayed in his personal development. The man who reins in his anger too much becomes a push over, someone others may view as 'soft'. One who has mastery over his anger, harnesses it as the force that pushes him to compete to be the best and moves him ever forward towards his goals.

We are a community of men who meet online and in-person to not only talk, but to do our work. 

The overall aim of Healthy Warriors is to equip men to support men everywhere with their anger, building a revolution in healthy masculinity that does not allow anger to affect others, but is consciously expressed by individuals alone or amongst peers, without shame or stigma.

Find out more at: https://healthywarriors.co.uk

I now undertake professionally accredited training in Shadow Work, a form of therapeutic psychodrama aimed at helping people understand their inner-world and make positive changes using symbolic action. Find out more at: https://htsorganisation.co.uk/our-shadow-work-trainees/

I am named after two men who rejected me and yet, I am able to stand in my power.

My childhood was a mess, enmeshed between competing racisms, from both my English and Pakistani sides of my identity. Too brown for one and too white for the other, I struggled to make sense of my self and my surroundings. I had ADHD and was developing Emotional Behavioural Difficulties due to a tumultuous home-life and a lack of familial affection. With my brown skin in predominantly white spaces, like my council estate and schools in Northampton, I was picked on and provoked, until I fought back. Fighting back didn’t serve me though, it only transferred my victimhood from perpetrators to teachers, who were only too willing to throw the book at me. Defending myself became pathological, I became reactive, argumentative and famously, disruptive - the keyword to throw any young trauma laden lad out on his boot heels.

I had a passion for learning, particularly history, though my pupil referral unit did not teach it specifically, we had a humanities teacher that told me I wouldn’t amount to anything anyway. So I remained there, in my teenage years, starting out as English as possible, socks tucked into my Adidas poppers, Burberry (fake of course) cap with the visor bent as narrowly as possible and three lions on my shirt. Later, as I got older and manoeuvred myself into a position of being one of the ‘harder’ lads at school, I found solace in hip hop, particularly Public Enemy and their song ‘Fight the Power’. I studied Malcolm X and found vindication in a struggle that wasn’t my own but made me feel at home.

I left the referral unit at sixteen with no qualifications, addicted to energy drinks and video-games. I held within me a repressed anger, which made me irritable and always looking for a war to fight. That was until I got into martial arts. I finally found a way to release my inner anger and harness it. In that, I discovered a way I could make things happen for myself. I went on to fight professionally and worked doors to fund my career, where I had many encounters with men and their repressed anger and rage. Thanks to my training, I kept my cool.

After a career in MMA, that took me around the world and made me a champion, I wanted something more for myself and I wanted to right the wrongs of my childhood, so I applied to do an Access Course at college and then went on to get into the University of Warwick, where I earned a first class degree. I undertook a masters degree at the University of St Andrews, where I studied the history of ideas and then onto the University of Oxford, to undertake a PhD, an extraordinary course for someone who had been excluded from school.

This led me to build on my knowledge of school exclusion by studying it academically whilst practically involving myself in local alternative provision, earning myself a place on the board of a local further education college.

I began a business teaching martial arts in an inclusive way, setting up a gym in Oxford. I focused the training sessions not only on raw technique and fitness, but on how people could use technique to symbolically defeat what was holding them back and set boundaries.

I then discovered the ‘Men’s Work’ movement and my life changed. Whilst attending a ‘rites of passage’ weekend, I had the opportunity to really have a look at myself. To look at the parts of me I have repressed and held in shadow - stories and lines I have told myself for as long as I can remember and which no longer serve me. After some powerful and transformational work expressing my anger and grief, some of which had laid dormant for over a decade, occasionally bubbling up like an invisible geyser of poison, I finally felt free to be me. I didn’t need to hate myself anymore and unconsciously pursue self-destruction and affirmation. I knew then I had to bring this work to as many men as possible.

I have spent the last three years throwing myself into this world, learning how to facilitate and coach men to make a change in their life. Using my experience in martial arts, education and men’s work, I stand ready to bring support to people who want to say enough is enough and step into their power too.

Crucially, I want to contribute to early intervention in people's lives, one of which is undoubtedly school exclusion. I am now full-time focusing my efforts on having conversations with parents and professionals in aid of formulating strategies to keep young people in school and therefore able to reach their full potential.

Find out more at www.excludedfromschool.com