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It was the season of fire in São Félix do Araguaia—a small, revolutionary town in the heart of Brazil, on the banks of the Araguaia River, one of the country's largest. Here, the Cerrado—Brazil's savanna—transforms into what locals call the��Cerradão, a denser woodland announcing the approach of the vast Amazon rainforest.

Every year, the areas surrounding the Araguaia River burn. But in 2024,��. The smoke changed the color of the sky and the sun. The ground, usually a deep red, turned gray. This combination weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of those who dream and work for a better future.

It was right in the middle of all this that a good seed was born: the Young Communicators of the�� project.

When the smartphone becomes a seed

It began with a desire to listen to the��land—or, the "territory," as we often say in the Brazilian socio-environmental field. For us,��territory is a word that speaks both of the physical land and the web of relationships that cross it. It's a broader concept, embracing the geographic space, its politics, and its ecological community.

Then, the idea then grew into a desire to listen to the territory's youth. After all, we were in São Félix do Araguaia for the��. There, I couldn't help but notice the smartphones constantly in the hands of the young people during all the activities. They were taking photos, shooting videos, and posting on social media.

In contrast, friends who work with photo and video in São Paulo—something like the Brazilian New York, nearly 2,000 km from the interior where we were—had been hired by me to do the same kind of work, but officially.

In the midst of it all, my eyes stinging from the smoke, I asked myself: "Why am I bringing people from so far away to do something that the youth here are already doing spontaneously?"

“Where we stand”:��A small explanation of something very significant

Some seed collectors of the Xingu Seed Network: in total, there are over 700 people, including Indigenous people from six ethnic groups and family farmers from 15 settlements in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Diversity is certainly a key word for this work. Photo: Bianca Moreno/RSX

In Brazil, racial and identity debates have gained significant momentum in recent years. Today, in the field of communications, the concept of "where we stand" (originally��lugar de fala in Portuguese, and often translated as “speaking place”, "social location", “positionality” or “standpoint epistemology”) is frequently discussed. This concept was brilliantly elucidated in the��—who, incidentally, is one of the key figures fostering the publication of important voices from the Black and feminist movements in Brazil.

As the Communications Coordinator for the��—and as someone who was not born or raised in the territories where XSN works—creating a communication strategy that gives genuine voice to those who actually live here, and who occupy a different "social location" than my own, is certainly one of my priorities.

"What if we created a network of young communicators within the Xingu Seed Network?" I thought, amidst the chaos of the fires.

Young Communicators of the Xingu Seed Network

It's interesting to see how some things simply flow with ease in life—as they say around here: "If it's meant to be, it will be." Over the following months, I slowly gathered pieces and had the good fortune to find the nutrients I needed to nurture this new project, still just a seed in my heart.

In a happy coincidence, the Xingu Seed Network received a couple of donations that allowed everything to sprout. It wasn't a large amount, but it was enough to select seven young people connected to seed collection to participate in the first phase of the XSN Young Communicators project.

The project officially lasted six months—from June to November 2025. During this time, these seven young people received smartphones, monthly stipends, and two training sessions in Community Communication and Audiovisual Production.

Exchanges: The best way to engage youth

Most of the young communicators selected had never traveled more than 400 km from their place of origin. They had never been on an airplane, an elevator, or an escalator. And suddenly, there we were, heading to��, the most indigenous town of the Brazilian Amazon—on the triple border between Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela—for our first activity: an exchange with the��, one of the biggest references in Community Communication in the country.

Working with youth has shown me that exchanges and knowledge-sharing are the best possible format. And there's nothing like learning from those who already know:��. Over a week with them, we learned basic communication concepts, structured our program—and, of course, became friends.

During those days, it was agreed and understood that videos and social media were the type of production that most interested the young people of the Xingu Seed Network. And it was arranged that we would produce some individual videos for social media and a collective documentary as the final deliverables for our project.

So, over the following months, our Young Communicators participated in and collaborated on the coverage of three internal XSN events. We held a second training session focused on structuring a script for the documentary we would record together and began capturing the interviews that would be part of it.

Today, nearly nine months later, the results of this great sowing continue to thrive: the documentary is in the editing process, and while we don't yet have resources to fund other phases of the project, we are integrating this experience to calmly and consistently formulate the next steps for this fertile and flourishing garden.

Results and learnings

What we did

• Two Communication Trainings
• ���Ա���
• One documentary (currently in editing)
• +50 content pieces available on�� ���Ի���

What we learned

• Youth are ready—and super excited!—to communicate: what they lack is guidance and support to know how to channel all that creative energy.
• Communication done with the youth of the territories increases our institutional reach within communities: people there love to see what they have produced.
• Working with young people from such an extensive and distant territory is expensive and can be quite challenging.
• For better results, we need more in-person moments (which also means larger budgets) and continuous, consistent support over time: six months is really just enough time to put the seed in the ground and break its dormancy.
• The voice of the youth does not invalidate the voice of people coming from outside—like my friends from São Paulo. In the end, I need both communication formats—one more formal, the other more community-based—to achieve my institutional goals.

About the author

is a journalist, writer, and traveler. Since 2023, she has coordinated Communications for the Rede de Sementes do Xingu, the leading community-based seed collection network for ecological restoration in Brazil. Additionally, Lia is an�� and a��.