Vetiver grass and the Vetiver Education & Empowerment Project (VEEP) model gets introduced to the coastal-fishing community of Canaries in St Lucia.

Where the village is full of creative and ambitious individuals and young people, with a pretty pastel coloured aesthetic splashed amongst its tightly spaced houses and clean streets, there has been a lot of effort and interest to improve things and explore opportunities which could make Canaries better. This has included ridge-to-reef projects, entailing coral planting, upstream reforestation activities, and general education and sensitization of interested persons in the community. It is through one of these efforts that members of the community came to learn about and connect with IAMovement, with interest expressed in becoming trained and empowered to make use of vetiver grass as another sustainable tool in their overall efforts to become more green and climate resilient. In 2018, this led to IAMovement partnering with the Canaries Community Improvement Foundation (CCIF) to implement a condensed, introductory version of its VEEP model there – which entailed a 1-week intensive programme of in-house educational workshops, and hands-on vetiver grass preparation and planting activities, at a small nursery site established in the community, and on several areas of land facing erosion and slippage. The initiative was a good success, with direct education and awareness being raised amongst 10-15 individuals in the community, and foundations being laid for the community and CCIF to explore further interest and work with vetiver grass and the Vetiver System (VS) in the future.

These efforts were the basis of the eventual regional, multi-country Grassroots4LaVie project of which Saint Lucia and the Canaries community were a part, which began in 2020.

A short film capturing the original vetiver education and empowerment initiatives in Canaries can be seen below.