Ana Santos
Educator, Agroecology Activist
It's not obvious to everyone, but the socio-environmental struggles are a struggle of the poorest communities. When environmental or health calamity strikes, black and peripheral people suffer the most. Our aim is to empower people to take sustainability and food sovereignty in their own hands: for centuries agroecology and urban farming was a common part of family's daily lives, it was so common, it is part of us, and we need to realise that it's part of our future. We can make it happen again. Agroecology, while being a technique, is also a movement to rescue a culture, an ancestry of the people and our goal is that more and more families see it as a possibility as well.
Ana is a Black female educator, culinarian and urban farming enthusiast and agroecology activist. Born in the peripheral communities of Rio de Janeiro, she works developing environment and farming sustainability projects within Serra da Misericórdia, a rocky massif spanning 43.9 square km in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro; an area where Urban and industrial development has wielded little mercy upon. The massif’s unique positioning has created tensions between environmental preservation and the urbaniSation and growth of informal housing constructions and industrial activities. She is co-founder of social environmental NGOs: Centre for Integration of Serra da Misericórdia and Arranjo Local Penha, which trains vulnerable communities to create urban green spaces and farming. It is in this land marked by structural inequality that she lays her belief in the healing power of plants and healthy food sovereignty for peripheral communities.