EMBS Community College

EMBS (Ethnic Minority Business Service) was founded in 1988 by the Jamaican publican Junior Lennon, Pakistani business owner Mohammad Afzal and newsagent Hans Raj Gupta, who was also Oxford’s first racialized minority and Indian bus inspector. EMBS’s founding was in response to record-breaking inflation and high rates of unemployment in 1980s Britain, which had particularly adverse effects on racialized minority people. In addition, the popularity of self-help as a form of anti-racist activism, as well as increased funding for enterprise development within racialized minority, inner-city communities by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, made EMBS’s establishment possible.

In December 1988 Lennon successfully applied for local authority funding via Section 11 of the Local Governments Act 1966. This funding supported EMBS’s initial services, which included business counselling, training schemes and the creation of a local ‘ethnic businesses’ database. In 1993 Shaila Srinivasan, a sociologist who had recently graduated with a DPhil from Nuffield College, University of Oxford, began working at EMBS as an outreach worker. Prior to her migration, Srinivasan was a lecturer at Delhi University, where she obtained her undergraduate and master's degrees. Her thesis on South Asian businesses in Oxford, which was published in 1995, brought her into contact with business owners in east Oxford who were EMBS’s target users. These experiences were significant in enabling EMBS's governing committee to adapt their services in order to meet the changing needs of local business owners, and primed Srinivasan to become EMBS’s manager in 1995.

Under the chairmanship of Afzal, who replaced Gupta in 1994, EMBS navigated precarious funding to offer educational courses such as sewing classes for South Asian women, basic literacy and numeracy programmes and IT training. In addition, EMBS was able to expand its operations into Banbury in 1995, which was funded by the Single Regeneration Budget, a government fund launched in 1994 to improve the lives of people in deprived areas. In 1999 Azmat Khaliq and Kanta Gopal were hired by Srinivasan to develop stronger relationships with South Asian communities (particularly South Asian women) in Oxford and Banbury. Under Srinivasan’s leadership as CEO of EMBS, the organization was awarded ‘Outstanding’ status for its educational services by Ofsted. Srinivasan unexpectedly died in 2011. Soon after, the organization opened a sixth-form college, which in part catered to vulnerable young people in Oxford including asylum seekers and those in the care system. The current principal is Zahid Bhatti.