Voices From the Field

Rafael Elot Aquino, 21 years old. Food Sovereignty facilitator

“I joined the Self Managed Development (AUGE) in 2006 during a regional youth meeting. After receiving training from AUGE I became a volunteer and started facilitating Food Security courses in several communities. Even though all the facilitators come from the same places, it has not been easy working with the communities, because the families are used to buying junk food. But with patience and stewardship, we have managed to see the bad effects of cheap food on our health. There was a case in one community where a woman told us that thanks to the courses, she stopped buying cookies to feed her children and used that money to purchase vegetables and fruits instead. I was very moved by this experience, and this motivates me even more to do this job.”

“I like to call myself a facilitator rather than a promoter, because the communities and the young people I work with already have the ideas. My task is mostly to inject motivation and help them coordinate their initiatives. I also learn a lot from the people in the four communities I work with; in fact, my family says that I have become more extroverted and that I now have goals in my life. I feel very happy, because thanks to my grassroots work with AUGE I have been able to get a scholarship for college to study Rural Development Management and Planning.”

“My dream is to become a high-school professor in a rural area. I believe that rural education is a very important tool to overcome poverty and to improve the quality of lives of youngsters.”

“In rural communities, courses that focus on food sovereignty, applied leadership, reproductive health and intercultural communication are very important because they trigger leadership in youngsters and the parents realize that young people are capable of doing good things for the society.”