By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
October 19, 2021
Keithlin Caroo of St Lucia became the first Caribbean person to be bestowed with the title of IICA’s Goodwill Ambassador for Sustainable Development Issues on Tuesday.
Founder of Helen’s Daughters, an NGO focused on economic development among rural women farmers through giving them market opportunities allowing them to leverage their goods while improving agriculture techniques and solutions to the food and agri-tourism system, Caroo’s company formed in 2016 cupped the winning proposal for UN Women’s Empower Women Champions for Change Program in the same year.
In bestowing the honours upon Ms.Caroo via a virtual ceremony, IICA’s Director General Manuel Otero described her organization as a grass roots one that aligns with IICA’s mission and leads the sustainability needed in the agriculture and food sector today.
Her involvement in the sector which has been mainly dominated by men for many years, brings fresh new perspectives to returning St.Lucia to its agriculture roots which it dominated as the supplier of bananas in the region prior to becoming a major tourist destination. Caroo has since utilized technology in a three-tier system targeted at improving crop yields through monitoring soil acidity levels, proper weather tracking and as well as purchasing among its customers.
Speaking on behalf of Ms.Caroo, Former St.Lucia Energy Minister James Fletcher described Helen’s daughters as being pivotal in addressing the role of women in the industry, something that has been overlooked far too often at the Agriculture Census. He noted that within the value chain, women have been involved in every aspect of farming while Helen’s daughters has afforded many rural women the proper training needed to empower them in the industry while helping steer and guide them to proper business practices from entrepreneurship, marketing, adaptive agriculture technology and facilitating working relationships between these women and those in the tourism industry.
Fletcher remarked at the manner in which Helen’s Daughters has responded to building resilience among its farmers even as a Small Island Developing state faced with the effects of climate change, a system implemented that can also be adapted among Eastern Caribbean States and the wider Caribbean.
This kind of response he added plays an important role especially as food supply chains have been disrupted in light of the pandemic ravaging the world currently.
However, Fletcher says critical to more similar civil based organizations to succeed in the Caribbean, governments and agencies alike must be willing to “create the enabling environment through technical support, capacity building, risk mitigation measures, access to credit, and strategic partnership that will make it easier for them to succeed and ensure continued tangible and sustainable institutional support globally”.
But to Miss Caroo, recipient of the award and honour, says while she left her job at the United Nations New York offices to return to agriculture, where her grandparents toiled as banana farmers so she could have a better future, means a return to enable the women who have been overlooked as producers. She says this interest came about when her mother’s birth certificate showed her Grandmother listed as a housewife and her grandfather, the farmer. Caroo says this was furthest from the truth, as while many saw her Grandmother as just the market vendor, she in fact played just as a major role in her family’s farm, growing and tending to the produce.
In essence, Helen’s daughters pays homage to her grandmother, and while in its early start up years, it was viewed as a quaint -sweet past time helping rural women, she says instead the organization has served as a renewed and reinvigorating of the agriculture sector in rural parts of St. Lucia. It has also provided escape for battered women from the hands of their abusers, and at the same time a sense of pride for young persons like herself, to hold their heads up high as a farmer.
Caroo added that despite the technology present, agriculture has often been lackluster to attracting youth. She adds that agriculture is in need of a major rebranding and while the youth are often blamed for their disinterest in the sector, she laments the lack of showcasing the success of farmers and ‘farm-hers’. Caroo says despite this youth are expected to enter the sector fraught with instability, lack of support and a current aging farming sector.
She says Helen’s daughters started with providing the appropriate capacity development and a support network that would lead and guide women into the agricultural sector. The game changer was provided through assistance that came from outside the region, a mix of engineering and biology students from the University of British Columbia with Saint Lucian women farmers, which resulted in an innovative project on Humanitarian Engineering that matches technical expertise with on-the-ground agricultural issues.
In receiving the honour, Caroo says the title could not have been accepted without the support of many persons backing her organization. She adds while its pleasing to be the youngest and first Afro-Caribbean Female and person from the region to receive the title, she aims to not only be the voice for youth and women in the agricultural sector within the region, but to also humanize policy makers to see that agriculture should be people centered and to connect that bridge.
Since its inception in 2016, over 300 women have been trained in sustainable agricultural practices and agribusiness. This year the University of the West Indies has partnered with her organization for its second World Food for change Week, to provide similar training to 359 registered participants in sustainable agriculture and business development.