The Sojourner Foundation has started working with its second group of young people. This time, we have a one year programme that consists of two 10 to 12 week terms and a 12 week internship period. We continue to partner with the Barbados Youth ADVANCE Corps and we are working with 11 trainees from BYAC. This year, we also have 2 other young people who saw their peers doing something they thought they would enjoy as well, so they have joined us too.
We are so excited as all the students are very enthusiastic about training with us. We hope to be empowering a cadre of 13 young leaders over the coming months to be.more self sufficient, to farm organically, eat more nutritiously and live in a more wholesome, sustainable way.
Please see the attached document for the details and pictures of what the young leaders have been doing over the past few weeks.
Many, many thanks for your generous support over the past year and a half!
The Sojourner Foundation started our student internship programme in May 2021 working with ten of our students from the September to December 2020 YFLP. This start was delayed due to the rise in Covid-19 cases on the island in January and the volcanic eruption of La Soufriere Volcano in St Vincent caused further delays. It will run through September 2022, when the next cohort of students will start their training.
The internship programme continues to focus on hands on sustainable agriculture practices including soil amendment, planting and management of various crops. We have created a cooperative element in which our interns can sell the produce that they plant on Kamp Deed and retain a portion of the proceeds. The crops that have been planted are cucumbers, chives, thyme, green beans, lettuce, bok choi, sweet potatoes and cassava. The students are also processing fruits to create value added products such as mango chutney and salsa. We have continued to look at the development of their soft skills and innovative business development through mentorship and entrepreneurial training. In sharing the history of agriculture in Barbados as part of teaching sessions, we decided to take the interns on a hike to allow them to connect with the historical agricultural landscapes and to gain knowledge of the many varieties of plant life located here.
We have allocated half acre of land for the students to supplement the crops that they have already planted to ensure we have a greater variety of produce. We started to clear the space allocated but we are seeking additional funding necessary to have it ploughed and furrowed and to purchase the seedlings.
With just over three months left in the programme, we are hoping to have a greater variety of produce and products for sale to the public and youth who are more empowered to follow their dreams and exact change in their communities.
The Sojourner Foundation (TSF) completed our 3-month Youth Farming and Leadership programme in December 2020. We continued to focus on hands on exposure to sustainable agriculture, including permaculture techniques. Our students were engaged in the various aspects of farming, including clearing, tilling, planting, creating and applying mulch, composting and water conservation. We also placed emphasis on food systems and the students learned about each area along the value chain as a potential platform for entrepreneurial opportunities. Our students continued to work in the kitchen on J&P Farms and made several tasty dishes, including baked fish, banana and chocolate cakes and mango flavoured pepper sauce.
Students were engaged in several other activities including natural building (with bamboo and pallet wood), in which they helped to build grow boxes, a shade house and fencing. They were thrilled that we entrusted them with larger pieces of equipment and power tools, which they operated confidently and safely. The students also participated in the building of a basic, but functional solar oven using a pizza box that can be used for drying produce.
Barbados Youth Business Trust (BYBT) completed a module that introduced the students to an entrepreneurial mindset, planning and goal setting, marketing techniques, financing and making a pitch. One of our students has been given the opportunity to work with a BYBT mentor based on the strength of his pitch!
We are looking forward to restarting the programme with the next cohort of students, but their residential “para military” segment is yet to be completed due to the current COVID-19 restrictions. We are also offering 12 youth participants from the September to December 2020 programme the option to intern with TSF and J&P Farms over the next few months.
TSF is truly grateful for the support from the GlobalGiving network. Contributions supplemented the initial government funding and allowed us to finish the 3 month programme. However, due to delays in the payment of stipends to the students, as government priorities shifted in the COVID-19 environment, our attendance levels dwindled significantly. It is therefore critical for us to be able to attract independent funding to continue this work. In our final check in with students, they each expressed gratitude to all the facilitators and the learning environment we created – a space where they felt welcomed, respected and supported. They all came away with a greater appreciation and understanding of what we shared over the 3-month period.
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Following our 7 week pilot project from May to June 2020 with 22 students from the Barbados Youth Advance Corps (BYAC), The Sojourner Foundation is currently engaged in an extended 3 month Youth Farming and Leadership Programme. We started in September 2020 with 21 of the same 22 students. We are now delving more deeply into the training activities in the various modules of the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) curriculum. The programme runs from Monday to Friday each week, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, with a one hour break for lunch.
We are further developing our students' knowledge of sustainable agricultural practices, culinary arts and natural living. We are encouraging them to work on the development of their business ideas, goal setting, researching their target markets and looking at pricing and their value propositions. We have been fortunate to secure a partnership with the Barbados Youth Business Trust, another registered charity that focuses on business mentoring, start up financing and entrepreneurial skills development.
We have attached a presentation, which shows a number of the various activities in which we have engaged our students over the first 6 weeks of the programme. We look forward to working with the BYAC students each year and continuing to expand our programme and our model farm space to ensure increased youth participation in agriculture and greater economic development, food security and overall resilience in our island.
The Sojourner Foundation worked in partnership with the Barbados Youth Advance Corps (BYAC) to engage young people in our Youth Farming and Leadership Programme. The experiential educational programme was developed around agricuture using a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) curriculum. We shared knowledge of sustainable agricultural practices, culinary arts, natural living and entrepreneurship. We highlighted the importance of food security and having a strong food production system that enables us to feed our community healthy food, while preserving our environment. We demonstrated the many diverse avenues in which young people can become involved in the agricultural sector, such as agro-processing, marketing, sales, bookkeeping, developing technological applications and agritourism. They were also provided guidance on how to navigate adulthood, as we discussed coping mechanisms for current challenges, including those related to COVID-19, as well as helping them to unlock their creativity, compassion and critical thinking skills.
We adapted our experiential learning programme to include 4 weeks of online delivery, which consisted of two days of virtual class meetings and two days of assignments that were to be completed at home. Following the initial 4 weeks online, we completed 3 weeks of practical training from Monday to Thursday on the farm (at Kamp Deed in St. Andrew and J&P Farms in Neil’s Plantation) and in the kitchen (at J&P Farms). The students participated through various methods, including the following:
We promoted a sense of discipline and pro-social behaviours through the students’ participation in YFLP as we encouraged them to address any negative attitudes and behaviours they displayed. Our aim is to help develop the identity and purpose of each student. The programme looked at their social, emotional and technical skills development, while we encouraged them to find their voices and be capable of initiating and leading positive actions. We emphasise the importance of activism, respect and the protection of our planet, while empowering the students to become leaders in their respective communities.
Activities
YFLP delivered as much of the experiential learning programming as possible through a virtual medium in the initial 4 weeks. The last 3 weeks were on the ground – on the farm and in the kitchen. The following are examples of how YFLP was implemented:
Agriculture: Students were provided with grow boxes, soil mix and seedlings so they could grow food to maturity over the course of the programme. They kept journals of the progress of their plants once they had received them. We discussed and demonstrated the full process of organic farming, including the theory of permaculture and the application of sustainable farming methods.
Technology: Students were taken on a virtual tour of ALL GREENS, a local farm that uses technology to grow food. We discussed the various ways in which they can apply technological advances to farming and culinary arts.
Natural building: We demonstrated how the students can use things that they have in their own surroundings to build. Once they were able to go on the farm, they helped to build a second bamboo shower stall and changing room.
Culinary arts: Supplies were provided to the students for them to make hand sanitiser and they watched our resident chef during virtual classes preparing meals using local ingredients. When they were in the kitchen, they baked sweet bread and they also prepared products such as pumpkin salsa and they can sell in our market space.
Bookkeeping: We discussed basic bookkeeping concepts and how to prepare a profit and loss statement.
Youth Development: We engaged the students in various activities to promote their psychosocial development. We also supported them through challenges they may have been experiencing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our aim was to be as flexible as possible, as the national response to COVID-19 could have changed and our plans would have to be adapted. We were very fortunate to have been able to engage the students in face to face training with us for the last 3 weeks of the programme.
Assessment
The students were assessed based on their attendance and participation in the online discussions, assigned tasks and projects, online quizzes, virtual challenges, work in the field and recorded reflections. They demonstrated skills that they developed as they posted recordings of themselves carrying out the assigned activities over the 4 weeks of the virtual programme and during the following 3 weeks in the field. We used standards based criteria to determine the students' performance.
Conclusion
We hosted a showcase at the end of the 7 weeks and the students received certificates demonstrating that they had completed the programme, including the standard of their performance. The footage from all the activities was collated in order to show the results of the work the students had done and provide them with a reference library they can keep.
We thank those who have supported us through this GlobalGiving platform to help make this pilot project a reality. We hope to continue raising funds through this platform so we can expand this much needed programme for the youth of Barbados.
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