Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. I want to thank you for the invitation and for facilitating this.
I'm Warren Salmon. I am the founding president of the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators that was founded in 2013. The purpose of ONABSE is to promote and facilitate the education of all students, African Canadian students in particular. It's also to establish a network of African Canadian educators and others involved in the educational process to create a forum for the exchange of ideas and strategies to improve educational outcomes. We do this through an annual conference and other activities. It's also to identify and develop African Canadian professionals who will assume leadership roles and positions in education and to influence public policy concerning the education of African Canadian people.
Some of the functions include work to eliminate and rectify the effects of racism, harassment and sexism in education, to significantly raise the academic achievement level of students and to place particular emphasis on the type of learning that builds positive and realistic self-concepts among African Canadian students. It's also to establish and promote the degree of awareness, professional expertise and commitment among African Canadian educators necessary to enhance and contribute to the efforts of other educators and community persons. It provides financial and human resources for recruiting African Canadian school personnel, certified and support personnel. It supports training for all personnel to impact the education and socialization of African Canadian students; to meet and share ideas, proven programs and effective techniques for demonstrating that African Canadian students can learn; and to support and research positions on key educational issues that affect all children and students of African descent as they relate to public policies. It's also to address the economic gap experienced by the African Canadian community.
Our membership includes educators, administrators, students, parents, communities, member school districts, institutions and businesses. We are, as I said, Ontario focused.
Before we were founded, there were a number of Black educator networks in numerous districts, and we've given them a seat on our board. That includes districts in Windsor, Toronto, Peel, Durham, York Region and Ottawa right now. We're a provincial affiliate of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, which is based in Washington, D.C., and we also have a sister organization, the Nova Scotia Alliance of Black School Educators.
We're the recipient of two SBCCI grants, one for charity readiness and one for grant writing capacity support. Right now, we're a non-profit, but we are looking at becoming a charity, and that will help us to increase our capacity and growth to do it in a more timely manner.
That's my introduction, and I look forward to answering further questions.