News

Tomorrow, September 30, 2020, education leaders and government officials from Canada and Saint Lucia will come together to celebrate the launch of a $720,000 Skills to Access the Green Economy (SAGE) country project.

Skills to Access the Green Economy (SAGE) is a six-country program with Dalhousie University leading the SAGE-06 project in Saint Lucia and will focus on strengthening competency-based education and training in climate-smart agriculture.

Dalhousie University President, Dr. Deep Saini, will be joined by leaders from Algonquin College, supporting partner from Canada, Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, Saint Lucia, National Skills Development Centre, Saint Lucia as well as program funders and national stakeholders at 1:30pm EDT https://www.facebook.com/DalACGlobalEd)

The Caribbean islands are among the most vulnerable areas in the world to climate change, which puts their economy, environment, and population at great risk. The SAGE program will help Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia become more resilient by supporting technical and vocational education training (TVET) in key economic sectors associated with climate change in the Caribbean.

“Dalhousie’s Faculty of Agriculture has a long history of project activity in the Caribbean and is committed to addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development goals with this project,” explained Faculty of Agriculture Dean David Gray.  “Responsible consumption and production, quality education, climate action and decent work and economic growth will be a large part of this collaborative project.”

The agriculture sector in Saint Lucia is dwarfed by the tourist industry but remains pivotal to sustainable economic growth for the island, both in meeting the demands of the hospitality industry as well as increasing food security for residents. SAGE-06 will increase economic opportunities in agriculture for male and female graduates from TVET institutions in Saint Lucia and support national development objectives to strengthen the green economy.

Dalhousie faculty and staff will work with Saint Lucian counterparts to develop new curricula to produce skilled graduates who can meet the demands of the island’s labour market, while Algonquin College will work with Saint Lucian partners to develop student success policies that can support all learners, including those from vulnerable groups, on their career pathways within the new programs.  The new curricula will focus on high-value crops, farm management and processing and labelling with the cross-cutting themes of gender equality and entrepreneurship woven throughout the teaching modules.

“It is essential that new curricula address the fact that many of our graduates will be job creators, or at the very least self-employed,” says Anthony Bonaparte, Dean of Agriculture at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, “so we very much look forward to working with Dalhousie to make agri-entrepreneurship a focus of our new programs”

The SAGE program is funded by Global Affairs Canada and managed by Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) and the total value of the SAGE-06 project is CAD 720,000. It will run from 2020-2023 and will provide many opportunities for collaboration between faculty, staff, and students from the Canadian and Saint Lucian partner institutions.

For more information on the SAGE-06 project please contact David Parks, Coordinator, at Dalhousie’s Faculty of Agriculture (david.parks@dal.ca).