The inaugural class given by Tereza Ramos to kick the school year off at the Joaquim Venâncio/Fiocruz Polytechnic Health School, in Rio de Janeiro, was a genuine lesson in political participation. A community health agent (CHA) since 1978, Tereza is currently the president of the National Community Health Agent Confederation, which brings state federations from ten Brazilian states, a few of which existed before the Community Health Agent Program (CHAP), together. In this interview, granted a day before the lecture, Tereza talks a little about the community health agents' battle in search of reducing the precarious nature of their work. This battle culminated in constitutional amendment number 51, dated February 2006, and in law 11.350, dated October 2006, which regulates the amendment, the legal guidelines that support the community health agent's profession and is an example of the exercise of citizenship not only by Tereza, but of the group of CHAs she leads. A historical heath sector militant, who crossed paths with Servio Arouca in the 8th National Health Conference, Tereza also opines on the training the CHAs have been getting in technical courses. This training is considered as vitally important, alongside the elimination of the precarious nature of job ties and regularizing access, for these workers' actual professionalization and to the acknowledgement of their rights.