As well as being an urban grower, Kirtrina has volunteered to help create and maintain various community gardens in Upstate NY as well as Philadelphia. Though certified in permaculture, Kirtrina identifies with agroecology as a more politically informed way to practice her land work. She also co-organizes Soil Generation, a Black and Brown-led coalition of urban agriculture advocates, environmental & food justice activists who work within a racial and economic justice framework to help inform policy and provide community education and support to gardeners in the city. Kirtrina is currently the community organizer for the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia where she works with gardeners around the city, to gain access to land and other resources. is a dedicated mother, drummer, urban farmer, food & land justice activist, community organizer and Afroecologist. Saulo is a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, and has served as board member and advisor for many organizations, including The Food Project, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund and Justice at Work. in International Development and Social Change from Clark University. He has a bachelors of science degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco state, Brazil and a M.A.
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Prior to WhyHunger, he worked as the Latin America Program Coordinator for Grassroots International, and served as consultant to international funders, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Originally from Brazil, Saulo brings years of experience working with urban and rural families in the United States and abroad. He works to advance initiatives of food sovereignty and agroecology by identifying resources and network opportunities that will strengthen the work of grassroots organizations and social movements. Saulo Araujo is the director of the Global Movements Program at WhyHunger. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. We will use this unique forum as an opportunity to hash out the ways in which our visions for collective liberation can be realized in the strategies and practices of our movements and movement-embedded research. This symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, and movement activists, each of whom defy easy categorization into any one of these categories. How can research, within and without institutions, support the vision and strategy of these movements?
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At the same time, a growing number of food, environment, and agricultural researchers seek to bring their work into alignment with these movements–shifting resources of methodology, knowledge, and institutional capital into the service of transformation. How do grassroots ecological practices connect with broader visions and strategies for collective liberation? Through practices of growing food and managing natural resources, they work to transform human-environment relationships from the ground up–and transform society in the process. Grassroots movements like agroecology and permaculture prioritize direct engagement with the environment. Mellon Symposium 2018 Organized by Rafter Sass Ferguson
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Doing politics and doing science at the human-environment edge.