A STUDENT has fundraised thousands of pounds to fund her education at one of the UK’s most prestigious universities.

Hannah Lloyd, who was raised in Birmingham, resorted to fundraising to cover her £44,000 tuition fees at Oxford University. After failing to secure numerous scholarships, the 26-year-old raised over £34,000 on her own.

However, as the fee deadline of September 30 loomed closer, Hannah decided that she needed help from the community.

We have a responsibility to help support those seeking education that will in turn help elevate our community

Hannah’s journey has been a tough but inspiring one with only 0.9% of Master’s students admitted to Oxford University in October 2020 being of a Black British background – an approximate of 41 of 4438.

Prior to starting her degree, she worked at Oxford University’s Student Union where she made a huge impact. Her achievements included launching the University’s only annual BAME leadership conference, supporting students to fundraise over £40,000 annually for charity and running schemes to encourage more diverse students to apply successfully to Oxford.

Alongside work, she volunteered with a local museum and more recently has begun working with local organisations to improve racial equality within their employee and volunteer teams.

When she applied and was admitted to Oxford in May 2020 to study International Development, she was not eligible for any University scholarships and struggled to find external scholarships that would close the enormous gap.

Faced with the impossibility of obtaining traditional funding, Hannah did the last thing she knew how, which was to fundraise. As part of the fundraising campaign, Hannah has appeared on BBC South to discuss the access problem at elite universities and also trained alongside her studies to run a 5km race on the world’s largest inflatable obstacle course in August 2021. Of her over 570 donors, hundreds have been students at Oxford University who are in support of Hannah because of the impact that she had on their Oxford experience.

Members of the Caribbean community have donated and are in support of Hannah making saying: “We have a responsibility to help support those seeking education that will in turn help elevate our community”

One member said: “It is an honour to support young achievers like Hannah… ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. Hannah’s commitment to her studies at such a prestigious university is inspirational and aspirational to her community and like minded peers.”

Hannah’s Master’s Degree in Development Studies focuses on the economic, political and social development of (often post-colonial) countries. She is writing her thesis about the relationship between the Jamaican Government and the Jamaican Diaspora, particularly in the area of crime prevention.

As a research-centred degree involving a thesis of 30,000 words (3x the length of most master’s degrees), it is expected that her degree will make a useful contribution to our understanding of how diasporas connect with their home countries and how they can be powerful forces for good beyond remittances. It is a two year course – she has completed the first year and the second year (for which she still requires funds) will begin in October.

At undergraduate level she studied Law and Criminology at Sheffield University, where she also received grants to study in Finland and South Korea, worked with college students and volunteered with a free legal advice clinic.

One thing that is clear about Hannah’s campaign is that wherever she goes she has an impact on the people and spaces around her. Her campaign is not just about her getting to Oxford but about raising awareness of the barriers to education that Black British students are facing.

In the sector that Hannah is stepping into, currently Minority Ethnic Staff are concentrated in the lower ranks and the UK’s first Black British Female Ambassador was not appointed until 2018. As with much of our society, this must change.

There is no doubt that Hannah’s achievement of this degree is not a personal gain but a public good, through which others in our community will benefit.