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Meet the mother who launched the UK’s first magazine celebrating black girls and boys

Words Kaye Holland

Jide Alakija

Serlina Boyd was told that her business idea, Cocoa – a magazine for black children – wasn’t viable but refused to listen to the naysayers and launched Cocoa Girl and Cocoa Boy, which have gone on to garner more than a million readers. Kaye Holland has the interview

Four years ago when Serlina Boyd quit the publishing world – “because I just couldn’t seem to get to where I wanted to be, which was an art director” – and retrained in childcare, she never imagined that she would return to the industry she exited.

The 41-year-old was enjoying running a mini nursery from her home in Croydon, south London when the pandemic hit and forced us all into lockdown.

With schools shut, Boyd found herself – like parents across the country and around the world – homeschooling her two children.

Jide Alakija

She wanted to buy her daughter, Faith (who had been struggling with her image and confidence as the only black girl in her class at school) “a magazine that spoke about her culture and made Faith want to be Faith – and not someone else.”

Boyd continued: “I remember, during the first lockdown, looking for magazines at Tesco with Faith and thinking ‘there has to be something here that speaks to where I am from and represents girls like Faith’ but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

The lack of diversity in the magazines they picked up, inspired the pair to create their own magazine – Cocoa Girl – with the aim of celebrating and affirming Faith and other black children, who were being made to feel that they weren’t enough.

“I had no children coming into my nursery because of Covid,” explained Boyd, “so I just thought ‘I am going to do this project.’ People were panicking about what they were going to do for work but I didn’t panic as I knew I had been given the gift of time.

“I had time to sit down with my children and love Faith even more – usually she was sharing me with the kids in my nursery – so the magazine project was really special.”

The mother of two initially shared Cocoa Girl with a tight-knit group of family and friends whose response was ecstatic.

Buoyed by their reactions and support, Boyd mentioned the project to a publisher she used to work with back in her magazine days.

“I told him ‘I have just done this [Cocoa Girl]’ and he said ‘Serlina, I don’t know how to tell you this but your magazine is never going to sell. No one will want to advertise.’

“I think he was trying to be real – he knows the game and thought it would be hard for me to launch Cocoa Girl.”

Fast forward a couple of days and an African-American man, George Floyd, was brutally murdered by a white ​​police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis, America.  In the aftermath, Boyd knew that she needed to defy her doubter(s) and launch Cocoa Girl and Cocoa Boy – the first of their kind in Britain – in a bid to empower black children.

“How can I tell black children they can achieve when all they see is trauma?” explained Boyd. “I grew up in trauma – I went to school with Stephen Lawrence.

“Now Faith is growing up seeing George Floyd’s murder reported on the children’s programme Newsround… it’s just more trauma.

“So I took the plunge and published the front cover of the first Cocoa Girl on social media, with a link to a mini-website where people could purchase the magazine.”

The rest, as they say, is history. “My phone went ‘ding, ding, ding,’ and in a week I had made £50,000,” smiled Boyd.

Cocoa Boy followed a few short months later and the media began to sit up and pay attention. “The BBC interviewed children who had bought the magazine and they were in tears saying ‘I have never received anything like this. I am seeing myself [represented] for the first time,’’ shared an emotional Boyd.

However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing and the mother and daughter duo have had to learn the ropes the hard way. “A major doll brand approached us quite early on about working together,” recalled Boyd.

“I remember pouring out my ideas – at that time I didn’t know about NDAs – and then seeing them in real ads. That really pained me and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Meanwhile Mail Online ran a hateful article about the black-owned business which resulted in Boyd and family receiving death threats, and subsequently upping sticks and leaving London.

“We moved to Hampshire – no one knows me up here and I can just concentrate on the magazines and get on with what I need to do.

“I called the Mail and asked them to remove the story, explaining I had a little girl who was six, but they said no. I was shocked someone could be so cold.”

The Cocoa brand aims to be the antithesis of the Mail, which has a reputation for stoking xenophobic and racist rhetoric, by allowing children to write the content.

“I want them to grow up to become honest journalists that people can trust,” said Boyd – whose time away from the publishing industry seems to have done her good, providing a little perspective.

To this end, the magazines have a team of journalists who decide the themes for each issue based on one goal: filling the pages with inspiring content for young black girls and boys and encouraging “beautiful conversations between parent and child because really Cocoa Girl and Cocoa Boy are more like a family magazine,” shared Boyd.

Her favourite issue to date? “It was the first edition – that was a real wow moment,’” acknowledged Boyd. “We also did an issue in celebration of Anthony Joshua and were able to give him a copy directly – you should have seen Faith’s face light up!”

Not content to rest on her laurels, Boyd is set to launch the UK’s first journalism school for children: “We’ve found a building and are looking at doing two evenings a week.

“Not many writers look like me. I want to get children excited about journalism, and for them to see it as a viable and good career.”

She’s also been offered some work in TV, looking at scripts and assessing what content is shown on the silver screen to children.

It’s happy news after a hard time and Boyd has some advice for others, who have been on the same ride as her: “Sell the solution, it’s a saying my Dad always had.

“There are so many problems we all have and things that haven’t been done before, but we can now definitely ‘sell the solution’ and be that change.”

Hanging up the phone, as she heads off to work with Faith on the next issue of Cocoa Girl and Cocoa Boy – “we were on the red carpet for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a groundbreaking celebration of black culture, so an element of that will feature” – for their one million readers, I can’t help but think: it’s good to have Boyd back in publishing.