As a youth, Monica grew up attending BCSEs and was mentored by BCSE leaders.  These organisations ignited her activist spirit. She later became a BCSE leader herself. Monica sees the rise of BCSEs as a response that could provide the Afrocentric education that schools could not. For her, earlier Black organizations offered Black programming, but the demands of government funders began limiting their ability to focus on the specific needs of Black communities and created a community “Game of thrones” competition among the BCSEs where groups sometimes would have to operate in cutthroat ways toward each other for the limited funding. Monica explains her vison of an umbrella model of Black organizing in Montreal where Black communities have a shared space in which different groups maintain their identities but act collectively. She explains that elements of this have begun to emerge in some Montreal BCSEs. Monica is now only loosely connected to BCSEs as she believes this allows her greater freedom to pursue initiatives without the constraints of government funding.