I am a peasant girl and I belong to an association of rural youth, AJR, which operates in two rural municipalities of Maranhão.

The association AJR is a social and collective organization that brings young people from rural communities together. It was founded by us, young people from the countryside, to help with local settlement groups, women´s groups, churches and others, to enable our stay in the countryside in a pleasant way.

Together with access to education, sports and recreation, health, valuing our local culture. preserving the environment and participation in political spaces. At the start, this idea of ​​rural youth organizing themselves was not taken seriously, because our families faced many difficulties and did not understand how we could overcome these. But through fighting and showing persistence we managed to get stronger through the formation of new youth groups. I take part in the group JOBEL, Youth Organized in Search of Education and Freedom. Which main objective was to create a high school that would meet the needs of other communities as well, so that we can stay in the countryside. Many of the group members are students and alumni of the agricultural family schools, who participate in community activities.

Even being a former student, I still contribute to the training process. We started gaining more space, managed to create the high school that will serve our communities through agro-ecological training. We are implementing a fruit seedlings nursery project, contributing to sustainable food production for the families. We thus planted trees in some public spaces of the communities. We created an artisanal ´babassu palm production project´, which is a native tree of our region, and recently we also managed to create a municipal youth council in our municipality. With these achievements, we managed to prove that we are able to defend and achieve our goals, without leaving the countryside.