DR. JOSEFINA CASTILLO:       “As a sociologist and as a woman, I’ve always been concerned with issues that address social and gender equality. Also my faith has always influenced my personal stance and beliefs in non-violent conflict transformation. These factors have shaped the work that I’ve carried out throughout twenty years, in academic and non-academic spaces mainly around educational issues. I believe it is through critical thinking that people can best learn how to perceive oppressive conditions that call for social justice actions in order to improve their lives. It is through education that people are able to increase awareness of the world around us, and transform our personal lives and those of our community. I refer particularly to specific oppressions that as women we endure not only as life givers, but also as reproducers of culture.

I worked as Adjunct Faculty of the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México(UNAM) for 7 years, and later on, my enthusiasm for popular education was encouraged through the work with Mujeres para el Diálogo, a non-governmental organization based in Mexico City. This job offered an opportunity to learn how to design and implement workshops, seminars and similar events with various groups of women on projects such as literacy campaigns, health, popular education methodology and improvement of self-esteem. This experience was most rewarding since I worked for nine years with urban grassroots women in Mexico City and peasant women in Chiapas and Oaxaca, two of the poorest states of Mexico.