Now I know that I want to be careful with what I eat, and really, not putting chemicals on my food is a good place to start. When the RVA students, Ingrida, Ceren and Paulus and their teacher Dani, first came, I was in the house. It was just Jasmin and them out there building the garden. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. I was stubborn. I...

Living at RVA, I became the master of the seeds, thanks to Tessa’s dedication to teach me all about them! And I’m so happy about it!!! Seeds are fantastic! These little dry insignificant beads can give life to your lettuce, tomatoes or even mango tree!!! Can you imagine? Because building gardens for people is nice, but not sufficient to keep them a...

There we are, deep into the program, ready to go and make a difference in the community! The next part of our program consists in making St Vincent climate change ready. To do so, the plan is to help locals become independent from imports and more self-reliant. A very big problem in countries that are more often touched by strong weather patterns i...

In an earlier blog I told about how we went into a community visiting some of the home gardens owners with whom we have worked with in the past 3 years. We gave them some plants and seeds. The action was great – the community felt our support, we demonstrated a good spirit and the importance of togetherness, and we were able to prepare the farmers ...

The TreeLympics went on for two years respectively 2014 and 2015 where St. Vincent and the Grenadines won Gold for being the most Active Country. Being a small country SVG won the third category in this competition: to plant with the highest percentage of participating schools. During those years planting with more than 100 schools and communi...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

Richmond Vale Academy (RVA) is on-board with a new ERASMUS project offering an opportunity to youth connected to the institution to travel to Fiji, Thailand and Italy to represent St. Vincent and the Grenadines in efforts to protect the ocean and stop pollution. STOP (Save The Ocean Project) will be implemented through 31 December 2021, and, in add...

The St. Vincent Climate Compliance Conference program was started in 2012 and is a 10 years standing action conference to make the citadel, here a small island, around DRH Richmond Vale Academy ready for climate change. Students from 74 countries joined with thousands of islanders and removed tons of trash from rivers, streets, communities and beac...

Part of the FWP program before going to the project is to learn how to do an investigation and then take action following what we discovered. Here is what we do for the investigation part. We chose to investigate about recycling in zero waste in Saint Vincent. To do so, we asked people around about what is happening in Saint Vincent concerning thes...

Garifuna drums are echoing through many communities in Central America, singing ballads of their ancestral land of Yurumein, today renamed by the British to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. But their drums seldom beat on the land which Garifuna ancestors protected through generations. Labelled as cannibals by mercenary Christopher Columbus to justif...

A project that trained five families in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to build their own biogas digester has won an international award. The Richmond Vale Academy (RVA) won the Energy Globe Award based on the project, which also teaches local communities about the benefits of biogas as a renewable energy, global warming, climate change and organic...

Working in a small space, with little soil and many constraints can spark a lot of creativity. I had been wanting to grow my own vegetables for a long time, but I felt restricted by my little backyard. When the students visited me for the first time, I showed them all my containers filled with herbs to make seasoning, Aloe Vera that I use as body l...

In Troumaca, a village in Saint David Parish, the North Leeward side of St. Vincent, there is a home-garden shaped like a sun. Tomatoes, lettuce, okra, beans, corn, basil, asparagus, pineapples, barbados cherry, soursop… from very common crops to rare ones in St. Vincent, a variety of vegetables and fruits are growing vigorously. Rabbits and their ...

My name is Ms Emris Stapleton, from Chateaubelair. I am a Field Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture. I am also a farmer, an organic gardener and an active community member. The idea of growing food without pesticides and other chemicals is something that has always intrigued me, but I needed expert advice as to where to begin. The opportunity ca...

Today is hump day! For the November Climate Compliance Conference students and facilitator hump day has a special flavour! Since January, Wednesday mornings have been pretty hectic at Richmond Vale Academy as we temporarily move to some villages nearby. From Wednesday to Friday, we have been living in Petit Bordel, Rose Bank, Troumaca and Rose...