The article analyzes the contribution of trainers of youth and adult educators to the permanence of the ideas of Popular Education in initial and/or continued training of Youth and Adult Education - YAE. As a central question, we seek to answer when, where and how the interviewees worked in training YAE educators throughout their careers. As a methodological approach, we carried out a survey of reference names in the history of YAE and selected five trainers with long-lasting and diverse trajectories: Maria Amélia Gomes de Castro Giovanetti (MG), Timothy Denis Ireland (PB), Elza Maria Fonseca Falkembach (RS), Edna Castro de Oliveira (ES) and Sérgio Haddad (SP). As a selection criterion, we sought to include men and women from different regions of the country, who worked both in universities and in other training spaces. We chose to understand their trajectories through autobiographical accounts, since this methodology allows us to remake the significant memories of these people. We can affirm that the trainers of YAE educators contribute to the training of other people according to the experiences they have accumulated, with Popular Education playing an important role in their reflections-actions-reflections throughout of life.