Sea Level Rise is accelerating in response to climate change and is producing significant impacts already being felt by coastal ecosystems and communities. Sea level rise (SLR) is the sum of oceanic thermal expansion, ice melt from glaciers and small ice sheets, melt and ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica, and changes in terrestrial water stora...

Everyone in the world depends completely on the Earth’s ecosystems and the services they provide such as food, water, disease management, climate regulation, spiritual fulfillment, and aesthetic beauty. Over the past 60 years, humans have changed these ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, l...

"My mom made bread from scratch, we got the fish straight out of the sea, and food directly from the land, and there were no chemicals! Now everything in the supermarket is processed. We local people think that it is normal to put chemicals on our land because we have been influenced by Europeans and Americans!  Let's change this! Grow Yo...

My experiences in Richmond Vale Academy were nice but also challenging, I leaned how to live in a community.  Community living made me feel like I belong somewhere - Also because everyone is passionate. We are conscious about how we best can help each other and the community as well. Living in RVA was good because I had to clean, going to the ...

The main authors of this book are the garden farmers, these authors all dared to believe they could become garden farmers. They became garden farmers and then authors published in this new book we all made together. We see nothing small about small farmers: We see big solutions to big problems. Here some excerpts from the book and how we are changi...

Many more will have to suffer Many more will have to die Don’t ask me why Bob Marley The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, whish is suffered by humankind: climate change. Fidel Castro   The Climate Threat There are thousands of books and academic journals, well sourced and p...

Trees are vital for the survival of humanity. They provide us with oxygen and take in Carbon dioxide, purify the air, contribute in the water cycle, contribute in climate change, provide us with wood, food, cool down the environment, give shade and shelter, give us medicine, protect wildlife and much more. Many species are used in landscaping while...

The first thing we did after the pandemic reached our corner of the world was to take immediate care of all staff and students in the academy. But after a five weeks lockdown, adapting to the new situation we believe now is the time to take a look at all the Vincentians we work with in the communities.  Many of the potential effects and proble...

We live in a world without balance. A world out of balance is open to bad compromises and dangerous illness. It is our task to bring the world into a balance that closes doors to both. Dangerous illnesses include Ebola, Cholera, Malaria, HIV/Aids, the novel Coronavirus and other contagious disease-causing agents thriving within the human body out o...

The atmosphere Blue light is scattered more than other wavelengths by the gasses in the atmosphere. This gives the Earth a blue halo when seen from space. The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gasses surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warmin...

Life is fantastic, expressed in million of different species of all kinds of shapes, colors and life forms, from the myriad of virus and bacteria, which actually forms a large part of all the living material, to huge whales or elephants. Scientists have just discovered corals that are estimated to be over 5000 years old. As life is found in the mos...

This chapter give a loose definition of globalization and sheds light on the history of how England fought for free markets, how the gap between rich and poor peaked in the years before World War 1, how World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the crisis of the 1930s reduced the gap between the classes, and how the era of globalization after 1980 has...

The concept of intelligence is used to describe how well the brain of a person works. It is important for a child to fully develop its intelligence and for anyone to keep developing the intelligence until old age. You may extend the concept to include different intelligences, and we will here describe four plus one intelligence. Logical intelligenc...

There can be little doubt, that with WHO declaring the ongoing spread of the Coronavirus being a global pandemic, that the affected countries are in somewhat of a crisis situation. If this situation teaches us anything, it is that we have to be more prepared to acknowledge the fact that crisis management is a fundamental skill in the worl...

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Promoting Food and Water Security - Richmond Vale Academy We are living in a time when food security is more important than anything else. Al...

“Being a volunteer is not about being a super hero, claiming to know everything, solving all problems as a Westerner might see it, instead it’s about giving the best of oneself, even when you can’t see the results, hoping that the people will, in turn, give the best of themselves, defying the odds which seem to destine them for hell.  I learne...

It is always very challenging to start something new! After 3 months of preparation, 8 Development Instructors from Richmond Vale Academy started the project period in Belize and Ecuador. Carlos is writing: "During the 3 months, we studied about the political situation in the world, the inequality, poverty trap, social injustice, and the different ...

  Why join the 10 Months program? Because you have the chance to find answers for many questions, let’s stop the ignorance and look at the world from a different angle. Put the problems on the table, let’s talk about inconvenient topics, let’s figure out together what we can do, make actions because we have enough armchair activists and philos...

Three students from the Richmond Vale Academy( RVA) who recently returned from Belize after a 6-month stint in that Central American/Caricom country, have all said they will cherish that experience for a very long time. The students, Justyna Gudra from Poland, Mami Tsuboya of Japan and Whitney Samuel from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, were part o...

"if we move one grain of sand the Earth is no longer the same" …if you follow the Leeward Highway in St Vincent (fancy name for the only main road) you will sooner or later reach Wallilabou where normally the people stop and visit a very well-known place because a few years ago that was the place,  where a big crew made the movie "Th...