Despite the high participation of women in agriculture in St. Lucia, it remains a male-dominated industry. This is due to women’s greater involvement in the informal sector and subsistence farming (1). In 2016, Keithlin began the Helen's Daughters campaign to support rural women with the use of adaptive agricultural techniques, capacity-building and improved market access.
What began as a campaign became a social enterprise in 2018, launching the Rural Women's Academy. The organisation has run workshops that train rural women in innovative agricultural techniques and business capacity building. They also facilitate collaborations between the women in the form of supportive unions. The Academy's goal is to transform small, female farmers into agri-preneurs. Participants are trained by senior, St Lucian mentors over a 6 month period who provide them with seminars and weekly classroom hours. One such mentor is the Head of Perishables/Produce at the nation's largest supermarket chain. The curriculum covers agribusiness development, dealing with suppliers and the government, and financial literacy.
The second incarnation of the Academy concluded in March 2020, when the pandemic struck, forcing them to move their operations online. This helped the project to reach more women, especially those in the south of the island. Helen's Daughters partnered with community centres to ensure participants had access to the necessary facilities. In total, 300 rural women have graduated from the various editions of the programme. As a result of the pandemic, the government accepted the Rural Women Academy's certification in lieu of its own, as it was incapable to carry out its own training. Keithlin has also recently secured support from Ashoka, to enable her to pursue enterprise full time in 2021.
