You can find here a short presentation of our speakers profiles :

Augusto Silva De Faria from MST (Brazil)

"I´m from Sao Paulo. I studied Economics at PUC (Pontificia Universidade Católica). I joined the MST in 2000 when I was encamped in Pontal do Parnapanema, extreme east of Sao Paulo. Then in 2003, I participated in the construction of ENFF (Florestan Fernandes National School). In 2005, I became a member of the MST. I joined the National Sector of Finance, contributing in Collective of International Projects. I actually work at the National Office in Sao Paulo with the projects. MST sent me to Spain last year in a scholar ship offered by University of Alicante. For a year, I studied "International Cooperation for Development". This year I continued my studies at a mastering level at “Universidade Politécnica” de Valencia, a MA in politics and processes of development. Also in Brasil I´m taking a post graduating work on "Social Theory an production of Knowledge" at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in partnership with ENFF".

Nunu Salufa (Democratic Republic of Congo)

"I’m Congolese and 49 years old. Starting in 1985, I worked 3 years as Secretary of Direction in the inspection of education at first and as accountant several months afterwards. In 1989, I entered into the social justice movement when I took the position of chief accountant at UWAKI (Union of Women farmers of Kivu). This NGO worked in the countryside, though in rather critical conditions especially since communication wasn’t easy at all in regards to the extent of the geographical area. The number of on-the-field agents was not enough, so I had to approach the hierarchy in order to ask to become a coordinator to reinforce the team. I was then holding several posts concurrently without any extra salary. As a woman, I found a lot of things that were appalling. This led me to always come alongside my fellow women and to continuously search for solutions to their problems. Together, we’ve carried out several studies to identify their real needs and considered how to be able to meet them. Among these problems, we’ve concluded that the rights of the women were not being respected. We have for this reason organized several training sessions to help women liberate themselves because they couldn’t even talk about or demand their rights. Women were working without any breaks. To lighten their workload, we’ve created the “One village, one mill” campaign. In 1994, we conducted a comparative analysis of the situation of women in the city with those in the country. After an exchange of perspectives, we noticed that in the city, especially with the precarious social, political and economic situation where State workers could no longer touch their salary, where education lost its place and university diplomas no longer had any value, and only women who didn’t have an alternative, not having done any studies, became aware of the state of things and threw themselves into activities that generated revenue without capital, accepting complete humiliation. We have therefore created APEF in 1996 where I’ve taken the post of the Executive Secretary since then".