NURIA MARTIN AVILA – Ambassador
Núria Martín Àvila is a Barcelona Breaking Walls 2017 ambassador after two years of taking part in the program as an artist. She is 20 years old but since very young she started with her passion: theatre. She has always taken classes in Igualada, her city until she decided to start a new and more serious career in theatre in Barcelona. It was in this new school called “Col·legi del Teatre de Barcelona” that she knew for the first time about Breaking Walls and decided to join. It was one of the best decisions Nuria has ever taken. Breaking Walls is the change she needed in her life. She was not in my best personal situation when she joined but all those people she met in 2015 changed her life for the better. Nuria will never be grateful enough to all of them. “Breaking Walls is a very positive initiative that started very small and nowadays is huge. A lot of people are taking part in it and it is very nice to see how many people from so many places of the world work together for the same goal: to create a global dialog using the artistic art and skills of the members. “Breaking Walls has become a global family, my global family and I will always have a piece in my heart for all of them.”
EGYPT MURPPY-SMITH – Ambassador
Egypt Murppy-Smith was born on November 14, 1998. She was a Junior at Brooklyn’s ACORN Community High School when she found out about Breaking Walls. Since that first encounter, Egypt has successfully participated as a Breaking Walls artist in our Barcelona and Detroit initiatives. Egypt is now a student at Medgar Evers College where she is majoring in Psychology. “Breaking Walls gives me a platform to share my story in a way to help other people. It makes me realize that even though we live in different parts of the world, it does not mean we don’t share the same pain of many kinds of abuse. We all have this one thing in common, we are teenagers who want to be heard. We just want to influence the world to focus on a different direction. Breaking Wall teaches me we build bridges, not walls.”
ATENKOSI NYEMBEZI – Ambassador
Athenkosi Nyembezi is from the Philippi Township in Cape Town where he is studying LLB at the University of Cape Town. Athenkosi aspires to inspire young activists for the promotion of Education and Upliftment. He has a passion for using his words to empower. He believes in youth and he believes youth not only have the potential to be great citizens in the future but with the resources they have can change the status quo. Breaking walls provides a platform for Change to happen through Creating and connecting into a community that is the model of the future and the world we wish to exist.“Breaking Walls teaches all of our global family that there is one race – the human race.”
ANGELA CASTRO FREIRE – Ambassador
Angela Castro Freire was born in Concepciòn, Chile on the 10th of December in 1998, and her pronouns are she/her. She is currently studying in the English teaching program, working part-time, and participating in a feminist organization in her neighborhood.
Angela, known as Angie, has participated in different organizations related to feminism at the university and neighborhood. She believes that society can change for the better through the organization of our communities, and that spirit is what lead her to study pedagogy. Because of this desire for change, she joined Breaking Walls in 2018. Angie was invited to join Breaking Walls as an ambassador in 2021, an opportunity she accepted happily.
Angie’s favorite quotes and life mottos are:
“My veins do not end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, things, landscape, and bread, the poetry of all.” – Roque Dalton
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept” Angela Davis
CLAUDIA LEIVA PEREZ – Ambassador
Claudia Leiva Pérez was born on October 1st in 1999. She has lived in Curicó since she was 3 years old, but now she is in the English Linguistics and Literature Program at the University of Chile in Santiago.
Since her childhood, Claudia presented and demonstrated her leadership skills. Throughout her school years, she was frequently part of committees and the Student Body Government of their class. Claudia has always dreamed and tried to do what she could to have a better society, which led her to get involved in community services to help people in her city. When she was a teenager, she went deeper into Feminism, and it was then that she realized she not only wanted a better society but also aspired to live in a world where women were not second-class citizens anymore. Thanks to becoming -or realizing that she was a feminist- she understood and started to see everything in a different way, and since then, she has tried to be more critical of everything that surrounds her.
In 2018, during this personal discovery, Breaking Walls arrived in her life. She saw this amazing opportunity to join a program that cared about the same things she did, and of course, she decided she wanted to be part of it. She was an artist for 3 years, and in 2021 she was offered to become an ambassador. Currently, Claudia is very excited about everything that comes ahead, being an ambassador is a big challenge for her, but she can’t wait to finally start this journey.