My name is Leopoldina Alves, ex-student and presently a monitor in the Lago da Pedra/MA Family Farm School. The conditions for farming are favourable, but there are limitations to accessing education and infrastructure. These limitations are the principal contributing factor to the migration of rural youth to other regions in search of employment.

Faced with the reality, agricultural families, worried about the situation, founded an FFS in the municipality with a view to training rural youth in practising family sustainability. In the FFS we study alternate pedagogy which provides integration between families and their community turning them into the protagonists of our history as educating or educator.

We face the challenges posed by the lack of access to public policies that would assure us of credit, technical assistance and the valorisation of agricultural work as a profession. In the FFS we are motivated to continue training.

We already have alumni formed in Farming Techniques and graduates from public universities. Other alumni have their own enterprises or have temporary employment. By means of the FFS I overcame the challenge of farmers in making it possible for a farmer’s daughter to enrol in a university. It was no easy matter commuting every other week from my community to the FFS and put into practice the pillars of alternate pedagogy which made integral formation possible for me.

I graduated in Rural Education from the Federal University of Maranhão and became a rural education professional working with country youth.

I believe strongly that we should always struggle in combating the migration of young people who have risked their lives leaving the land to seek work in other regions. All the same, living off the land, one is guaranteed income and a good standard of living.

AS PAULO FREIRE TELLS US: Education does not transform the world. Education changes people. People transform the world.