For the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), ending this media domination, producing objective information and assuming the promotion of their claims, as well as their capacity to give answers to poverty are becoming critical issues.

Miguel Stédile, national coordinator of the communications department, explains MST’s approach: “MST can interact with society through communication. In a country such as Brazil, where the means of communication are between the hands of a few companies and where these companies are clearly in favour of big landowners and against the agrarian reform, the only alternative for the workers is to build their own means and manners to express their fights and demands.”

Since December 2008 and for an entire year, Frères des Hommes has helped to give access to training in information and communication techniques, initiated by MST for the landless farmers take part. 23 young leaders of MST receive theoretical and practical courses in analysing and reading audiovisual images, in film techniques, photo shoots, sound and lightning as well as editing techniques. Artists from the theatre company Latão de São Paulo as well as professionals from the public TV channel Brasil and the alternative Venezuelan television channel Vive join the training in order to bring their know-how and their experience to the 23 students. The young participants then train activists in their regions in audiovisual methods and set up small teams in charge of collecting images that are centralized in São Paulo for the production of new films and documentaries.