Discussion on ActionAid Skills Training in El Salvador

Brown Bag Discussion on ActionAid Skills Training in El Salvador

 

Wednesday, April 10

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM

2120 Francis Scott Key (Merrill Room) 

The issue of land grabbing is quickly gaining attention in Latin America. ActionAid, an anti-poverty, non-governmental organization, argues that many of those large land deals are happening for reasons of financial speculation, extractive industry, biofuels, and industrial agriculture, which mean a loss of land and natural resources for indigenous peoples or smallholder farmers and lead to issues of  food security and food sovereignty. ActionAid works with policy analysis on the ground along with community mobilizing and training advocates from both the Global North and South to fight against the loss of land. Two of their staff members will come to UMD to discuss their skills training around methods of mobilization and campaigning against land grabbing in El Salvador and will provide ideas on how you can use this training in your professional development.

Ann-Sofie Jespersen is an activist as well as a youth and training outreach coordinator for ActionAid. Through the last five years she has worked using local organizing to create social change in places as divergent as the Middle East, Europe, and West Africa. She was the co-founder of the Middle East Expedition that facilitated youth-driven creative projects to discuss engagement and politics in the Middle East before the Arab Spring. She has also been running international social entrepreneurship and organizing trainings. Jesperson has a Master’s in international development and business studies from Roskilde University with a special focus on different forms of organizing and social movement creation.

Kaissa Denis is ActionsAid’s assistant youth coordinator and a native of the Washington, DC area. Over the last few years she has worked with African and Latino diaspora communities in assisting them self-mobilize over both domestic and international socioeconomic policies. In 2011, she was invited to present her research on Law 70 and its effect on Afro-Colombians at the Pacific Coast Caribbean and Latin American Studies Conference. Kaissa recently completed her Master’s in public policy with a double concentration in economics and international relations at Pepperdine University.

For more information about this event please contact the Latin American Studies Center at lasc@umd.edu or at 301-405-6459.