GOOD TALK WITH AKILAH JARAMOGI
Co-Founder of Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project
Featured in EARTH, WATER, WOMAN
Akilah Jaramogi is a Forester, Environmental Consultant, Social Entrepreneur and Cultural Activist. She is the co-founder and CEO of the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project (FACRP) in St. Ann's, Trinidad and Tobago and a director of the Maroon Women Chamber of Cooperation in the Caribbean. As an environmentalist, Akilah has received many awards over the years, her most notable was being the recipient of Trinidad’s highest humanitarian honour, the Hummingbird Gold Medal Award on behalf of her organisation, FACRP. In December 2017, Akilah attended the International Civil Society Week in Suva, Fiji, where civil society and environmental stakeholders worked together to find common solutions to global environmental challenges caused by climate change. She also partnered with Commonwealth Foundation and Civil Society organisations in the Caribbean to understand the linkages between Gender and Climate Change. This project ran from 2018 to 2019. Akilah was also part of the contingent, representing Trinidad and Tobago at the Slow Food Terra Madre gathering in Torino, Italy. Her passion for ecological sustainability and nature is rooted in the work of her Merikin ancestors living off the land in the Company Villages in South Trinidad.
Akilah engages in new forest conservation and rehabilitation methods within the Fondes Amandes Community to curb the trend of forest and bush fires and to reforest the hillsides by imploring methods of agroforestry and permaculture.
Over the past three decades Akilah has worked tirelessly to share FACRP's model of community forestry in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe and the South Pacific region by participating in conferences, workshops, facilitation sessions and training workshops. Through these partnerships many community initiatives were developed to address both social and environmental issues.