What is UPMS?

The Popular University of Social Movements or Universidade Popular dos Movimentos Sociais (UPMS) was created at the 2003 World Social Forum (WSF) — a space for meetings and exchanges among social movements from different parts of the world.

UPMS emerged as a means for linking diverse forms of knowledge, strengthening new forms of resistance thereby making a contribution towards the reinvention of social emancipation, as a basis on which diverse projects work towards transforming dominant power relationships into relationships involving shared authority.
UPMS – Global Network of Knowledges – aims to contribute towards the creation of mutual understanding among social movements. For instance, in the sphere of global social justice, what is of deep significance is global justice for different forms of knowledge.
Subsequently, if we make more explicit the diverse forms of knowledge (mobilised by movements as part of their struggles) which are in turn understood and appreciated, more clear and specific will be the transformative actions of each of these movements and more autonomous and reflective would be their protagonists, in lending credibility to the discourse of fortifying diversity of such knowledge.
UPMS is destined for activists and leaders of social movements and members of nongovernmental organisations, as well as social scientists, researchers and artists committed to progressive social change. The training which this initiative intends to provide emerges from a process of self-education which has two main dimensions. On one hand, it involves the self-education of activists and leaders of social movements and organisations through the debates they hold among themselves and with social scientists/intellectuals/artists, thereby deepening the analytical and theoretical frameworks that enable them to enrich their practices and broaden alliances among them.
And on the other, it involves selfeducation for social scientists/intellectuals/artists committed to social movements through the debates they hold among themselves and with the activists and leaders of social movements and organisations, thereby completing the process of mutual reciprocity or exchange.

For more information on the UPMS, pelase acess the following link
  (http://www.universidadepopular.org/site/pages/en/about-upms/what-is-upms.php).