Big interview: Self-help builds self-esteem

When Bisi Akiwumi-Jones resigned from her job as a financial adviser to research and write a book about prejudice, she didn't realise she would end up turning her recommendations into reality. "I consulted Black young men for the book, and at the end they turned to me and said: 'What are you going to do with our ideas?'," she says. "It was meant to be a paper exercise, but my husband said I'd opened a can of worms, and had better get on with it."

The Home Office provided funding for the launch of what in the end became Voicing Our Issues and Struggles, but Akiwumi-Jones put her own money into the organisation as well. The initiative, which was named by young people, is made up of two strands: TeenzVoice, a social cohesion project; and the Black Male Forum, which aims to create a community of Black young men to "become part of the solution to the social problems affecting them".