By Armando Jose Torres
Before arriving at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for the first time, I was living and working at UC Santa Barbara as an admissions counselor. I traveled throughout central and southern California supporting and advising high school students, with a particular focus on first-generation Latinx youth and their families as they navigated applications to two- and four-year postsecondary institutions. I often facilitated after-school workshops in both English and Spanish for adults in community spaces. I deeply valued the communal process of asking questions, sharing experiences, and finding answers together in order to make more informed decisions about our collective futures. This interest is rooted in my childhood memories of love and solidarity within my own community in El Monte, California, where my family and neighbors often came together to overcome external pressures and limited resources. For the past 15 years, I have found fulfillment in identifying collective global challenges and building transnational relationships and networks of support within communities.
My dissertation, Cultivating Multiplicadoras: A Liberatory Learning Approach for Digital Equity and Social Transformation, provides an ethical and authentic roadmap for long-term, action-oriented, community-based participatory research in Global South contexts. Our collective efforts in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the co-conceptualization and co-development of a digital literacy, empowerment, and capacity-building course intervention for community mobilizers within a favela-based organization in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Favelas can be described as historically marginalized and informalized communities that have long resisted state neglect, removal efforts, violence, and persecution. Multiplicadoras are women community mobilizers and leaders who are often at the forefront of efforts to bring dignity, care, and solidarity to their communities. Growing transnational networks of multiplicadoras and collaborators, such as the Sustainable Favela Network — a grassroots network of more than 1,150 members, including 565 community organizers from over 370 favelas and technical allies — share a mission to “recognize, strengthen, and multiply community-based socio-environmental initiatives across Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, ultimately realizing the potential of favelas as part of a sustainable urban future” (SFN, 2026).
My academic and professional experiences working in nonprofits and NGOs in both the United States and Brazil have informed my interest in localized responses to the world’s complex and interconnected challenges. As a community mobilizer, I experienced firsthand the difficulties of developing, implementing, and sustaining interventions and programs. Now, as a researcher, my goal is to help bridge the longstanding research-practice gap by supporting community-engaged, evidence-based research and policy work that contributes to sustainable social transformation. Learning this early in academia became a call to action and a long-term commitment to using my time and resources in service of communities.
This summer, I will return to Brazil for the third iteration of the course intervention, which will now be locally facilitated and led by our multiplicadoras. My hope is that we can continue expanding networks of community leaders and researchers across Global Majority countries in order to strengthen community-led efforts to reimagine education worldwide. My identity, scholarship, and participation in this lab reflect this continued commitment to people, planet, and sustainable futures.
Congratulations, Armando! The Sustainable Futures Lab will not be the same without you.