HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ★★★ 1/2 - Video Librarian | HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - The Caribbean History Reader | Screened at CARIBBEAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION
Women's Studies • Anthropology • Environment • African Diaspora • Caribbean Studies • SustainabilityDate of Completion: 2013 | Run Time: 23 minutes | Language: English with English & Spanish subtitles | Captions: No | Includes: Transcript & Curriculum Guide | Directors: Sarah Feinbloom & Alexandra Swati Guild | Producer: Diana Fox
EARTH, WATER, WOMAN spotlights the Fondes Amandes Community Re-Forestation Project in Trinidad and Tobago, and its charismatic leader Akilah Jaramogi, in their ongoing efforts to transform barren hillsides into a vibrant, healthy ecosystem. A micro solution for the macro problem of climate change, this documentary urges young viewers everywhere to examine their relationship to Mother Earth. Three decades ago Akilah, a Rastafarian woman, settled on a barren, deforested hillside, blighted with floods in the rainy season and fires in the dry season. Together with her late husband, Tacuma, they started a family and reforested over 150 acres, restoring health to the hills and the watershed just outside the capital city of Port-of-Spain. When her husband died, Akilah continued this work, initiating the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project (FACRP), training community members as stewards of the forests and waters. Today Fondes Amandes is a thriving village atop a flourishing forest of 150 acres where residents have planted about 60,000 seedlings over the past 30 years. The community is regularly visited by international dignitaries and Akilah is heralded as the Wangari Maathai of Trinidad & Tobago.
Video Librarian: "Highly Recommended: 3,5 stars"
Aud: C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)
"Filmmakers Sarah Feinbloom and Alexandra Swati Guild’s Earth Water Woman looks at how women spearheaded a reforestation project in Trinidad’s Fondes Amandes. Co- founder and director of the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project (FACRP), Akilah Jaramogi explains how the project began as a grassroots effort in the 1980s, and then over the next 30 years led to the planting of more than 60,000 seedlings and restoration of 125 acres of forest. The documentary quickly covers the community’s history: former slaves lost their land because they could not afford to pay taxes, but in the 1970s an uprising of unionists, students, and activists led to land reclamation by Rastafa ians. FACRP grew from Jaramogi’s involve- ment with the Rastafarian movement; while her husband and other men were focused on “freedom gatherings, bubbling food in yabba pots,” she wanted to find practical ways to support Rastafarians and in particular Trini-dadian women. So in the early 1980s, she and her husband started planting seedlings and educating locals about environmental conservation. Reforestation has created habitats for wildlife and jobs for humans while also supporting agriculture, conserving clean water, and preventing forest fires. And the people of Fondes Amandes have developed a protective attitude to the forest and work to preserve the ecosystem it supports. As a West Indies professor says, the FACRP is “an outstanding example of indigenous, self- propelled, community-based eco-forestry.” Combining archival photographs and footage from the community, along with expository intertitles, this inspiring short documentary is highly recommended."
The Caribbean History Reader (Routledge, 2012) | Reviewed by Nicola Foote, Associate Professor of History Florida Gulf Coast University
"This film provides an important classroom resource for examining community-based struggles over water rights, while also providing critical insight into some often neglected currents in the study of the contemporary Caribbean. It adds an important new dimension to explorations of the global geo-politics of water and climate change, the environment, and the green economy. The film helps us understand the environmental philosophies embedded within Rastafarianism. Through its sustained focus on women's leadership, the film makes a valuable contribution to understandings of gender and Rastafari, and helps us move beyond simplistic assumptions about male dominance. Through the integration of historical perspectives and footage, the film also provides insight into histories of slave resistance and maroonage, as well as Caribbean Black Power. Highly recommended for academic libraries and for all courses in Caribbean Studies.
East Side Monthly | Reviewed by Jared Dimascio
"Armed with a camera, a small crew and a passion for water conservation and reforestation, Diana headed to Trinidad to produce her first film, Earth Water Woman: Community & Sustainability in Trinidad."
Trinidad and Tobago Guardian | Reviewed by Paulo Kerhanan
"This film shows the immense strength and commitment of one woman whose resolve has had a contagion effect well beyond the lush hillsides shadowing this verdant hamlet in St Ann’s."
Green Teacher Winter 2023, Issue 134
"Educators who are wishing to share intimate stories of Indigenous change-makers in their classrooms could show this film to students in the middle grades or above."
Official Selection | Planet in Focus
Official Selection | 2014 American Conservation Film Festival
Official Selection | 2014 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival
Official Selection | Langston Hughes African American Film Festival
Official Selection | Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival
Official Selection | 2014 Capital City Black Film Festival
Official Selection | 2015 Environmental Film Festival Australia
Official Selection | 2015 Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival
Official Selection | 2016 Caribbean Cinematic Festival
SCREENINGS
Bridgewater State University
Caribbean Studies Association
National Conference on Geography Education
Green Screen Environmental Film Series
Cable Car Cinema
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.
Technical Director of the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project
Featured in EARTH, WATER, WOMAN
Kemba Jaramogi is an environmental consultant and educator with over 20 years of experience in watershed restoration and management. She is currently the Technical Director of the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project. In 2005 Kemba served as a local youth Ambassador representing T&T at the SIDs conference in Mauritius. In 2011 she graduated with a BA Honours in International Development; Third World Studies with NGO Management from the University of East London, England. In 2013 Ms. Jaramogi was selected to join the esteemed Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum and is now a Member of the Alumni. In August 2014 she was the proud recipient of the National Youth Awards and Winner in the Environment Category, Ministry Child, Gender and Youth Development.