WHAT WE DO
Schola Campesina is an international agroecology school that seek to support food producers’ organisations in their struggle for food
sovereignty through local knowledge recognition, exchange and collective learning.
Grounded in the principles of the 2015 Nyéléni International Forum for Agroecology, ‘diálogo de saberes’ and popular education,
Schola Campesina facilitates the exchange of peasant, academic and activist knowledge across territories and movements.
Through international trainings, exchanges, research processes and events, Schola Campesina supports producers’ organisations,
social movements and agroecological networks by:
- strengthening knowledge-sharing and collective learning processes
- facilitating dialogue between peasant, Indigenous, academic and activist experiences
- supporting participatory action research rooted in communities and territories
- connecting local realities with global food and agriculture governance processes
- strengthening movements’ capacity to advocate for food sovereignty and peoples’ rights
- promoting horizontal pedagogy inspired by La Via Campesina’s agroecology schools and the campesino a campesino approach
- valuing languages as instruments of popular culture and encouraging multilingual exchange beyond dominant “colonial” languages
- stimulating the co-production of knowledge through collaboration between agroecology and food sovereignty allies
Our work is rooted in territories and communities while engaging with global policy processes and international movement-building.
We support collective knowledge co-creation, centred on grounded and experiential knowledge enriched by external knowledge
such as academia.
Discover the agroecological networks that we are directly supporting, the trainings that we facilitate, and the global advocacy that
we are involved in to influence policy decision.
NETWORKS
Rooted in its territory, Schola Campesina also supports international alliances. It currently holds the secretariat for the Grassroots Innovation Assembly for Agroecology and the Bilim Alliance on Agroecology in Easter Europe and Central Asia.
Home – Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology (GIA)
The Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology (GIAA) was launched in 2023 in response to the challenges of Agriculture 4.0 and other pressures faced by smallholders.
Schola Campesina currently holds the secretariat of GIAA. This global network collaborates to empower smallholders with control over their echnology. GIAA gathers organizations, local networks, researchers, and individuals who share our vision, including those representing farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists, seed savers, and local food processors. This also includes groups involved in spreading technological innovation, which encompasses tools, equipment, and digital solutions.
Schola facilitates a series of Encounters between GIAA members
Bilim Alliance
Bilim is an informal alliance of agroecological organizations from Eastern Europe, Central and Western Asia region created in 2022. Schola Campesina is currently the network facilitator. Bilim means Knowledge in Turkish and some other Central Asian languages.
The community brings together grassroots movements, organizations, NGO’s and other groups organizing peasants and small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples, academics, women and youth.
The members of Bilim community are practicing and / or promoting agroecology on the ground and /or at policy level, with a focus on protecting biodiversity and cultural heritage, placing smallholders’ knowledge at the center of food systems.
The work of Bilim is founded on the Nyéléni Declaration, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Peoples Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
AGROECOLOGY TRAINING
Schola Campesina facilitates learning processes with agroecology organisations across the world, based on the principles of peer-to-peer exchange and diálogo de saberes (dialogue between different ways of knowing).
Below are some examples of trainings and workshops organised during the early years of Schola Campesina. Since then, many other knowledge-sharing spaces — both online, including webinars, and in-person — have been organised through the networks we support, the Bilim Alliance for Agroecology in Eastern Europe and West-Central Asia and the Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology.