SANCTUARY
& FARM
located in Spring Garden, St. Ann Parish, Jamaica
Connect with us on Instagram
SOLIDARITY YAAD INTERNATIONAL
JAMAICA
As an intentional learning community our mission is to cultivate regenerative technologies for BIPOC women, girls, and LGBTQI+ gender expansive people towards:
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Climate Resilience
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Food Security
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Economic Advancement
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Healing Justice
We create safe and brave spaces centering trauma-informed care.
There is limited funding and programming to eradicate gender-based violence (GBV) against Black Indigenous women, girls, and LBTQ communities in Jamaica. Complicit rape and violence touches 62% of women and girls in Jamaica, which is 12% higher than the global average.
The Caribbean region is increasingly susceptible to environmental emergencies that are ignored. Black Indigenous women and gender expansive people are the most vulnerable and own less than 10% of land in Jamaica. Government bodies are not yet instituting necessary policies for effecting changes.
CORE PILLARS
IN ACTION
Climate & Livity
RESTORING OUR HEARTH WITH MAMA NATURE
Dubbing Wid di Land
In the 1970s, Jamaica birthed "Dub Poetry," where poets spoke words of heavy political, social, economic, agricultural and spiritual substance over raw reggae rhythms. It is an art form of resistance and resilience, an oral tradition, and radical authenticity—perfectly matching our mission to disrupt patriarchal and colonial harms.
In everyday Jamaican Patois, to "dub" something can mean to copy, rearrange, or adapt it. It also carries a sense of physical interaction, rhythmic movement, and grounding. When we say "Dubbing di Land," it refers to us actively intentionally stewarding and learning with the elements: working the soil, remixing resources, and creating a beautiful, self-sustaining rhythm with nature.
In our world of Dubbing with di Land, we grow biocultural literacy, climate awakening and blossoms into sustainable resilience for all species. We arm ourselves and our communities with practical natural tools to withstand climate shifts on their own terms. Through hands-on, practical stewardship and training, we welcome everyone—including those facing literacy barriers—to step into their power. By working with the land’s natural bioprocesses, our people learn permaculture basics while building food security and earning an independent living.
Our Process: Living Library & Laboratory
We replace rigid classrooms with applied, sensory-based field literacy. By bridging oral traditions and ancestral wisdom with touch-and-see ecological design, participants naturally absorb environmental science and functional literacy through direct, physical practice.
Wha We A Gain: Fruits
of wi Labor
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Climate Autonomy "Pon Clear Terms": Locals learn to read the landscape, manage watersheds, and protect their homes from landslides or droughts using zero-cost, natural materials.
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Functional Field Literacy: Accessible, high-retention training modules build foundational literacy alongside technical farming skills, creating a confident, skilled local workforce.
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Economic Mobility: We transform local seeds, healthy soil, and community labor into chemical-free food supplies, micro-enterprises, and direct household income.
See highlights from Solidarity Permaculture offerings.
Food & Land
LIVING SOIL
& NATURE'S DESIGN
We are still in the formative years of stewarding our hub and rematriating 25 acres of mature moist tropical forest on the St. Ann and St. Mary border, transforming the landscape into a resilient sanctuary of food security and ecological integrity that regenerates with the cycles of nature. By rejecting toxic chemical inputs and restoring the intrinsic vitality of our living soil, we partner directly with native microorganism and mycelium networks to cultivate nutrient-dense food webs. Our holistic design integrates advanced agroforestry, strategic watershed management, and closed-loop organic energy inputs to secure sustained socio-economic advantages for our local community.
Nuh Waste: Rinse & Repeat Eco-Cycles
In our closed-loop world, waste does not exist—the output of one process becomes the fuel for another. By cycling our own energy, water, and nutrients indefinitely, we eliminate the need for costly external inputs like chemical fertilizers or commercial feed. Over the next three to five years, we are scaling this self-sustaining framework into a regional model to share resources, knowledge, and regenerative practices with our local communities.
Ecological Cycles In Process
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Biodynamic Composting: We recycle farm clippings and organic matter into premium, living fertilizers. Infused with natural herbal preparations, these piles boost the soil’s immune system and stimulate a vibrant underground ecosystem.
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Vermicomposting (Worm Farming): Thousands of red wiggler earthworms digest our kitchen and organic waste, transforming it into nutrient-dense worm castings—a gentle, high-potency superfood for our crops.
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Organic Feed & Living Mulch: We grow chemical-free grains and forage to feed our livestock, whose manure cycles back into our compost. Plant biomass is chopped into protective mulch that shields topsoil from tropical rains while slowly nourishing the earth.
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Water Harvesting (Swales & Berms): We shape shallow trenches (swales) and earthen mounds (berms) along the land's natural contours. This captures heavy rainwater, channeling it deep into the soil to hydrate crops rather than washing away precious nutrients.
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Chemical-Free Sanctuary: By entirely rejecting synthetic pesticides and weedkillers, we safeguard our air, water, and food. This allows native biological networks—like mycelium and beneficial insects—to thrive and protect the ecosystem autonomously.
See highlights of these model grounded in national excellence; our proven methodology is validated through high-profile collaborations with the Ministry of Agriculture and Jamaica Organic Agriculture Movement (JOAM) Soil Fertilization Program JENESYS.
Healing & Justice
ROOTED IN CARE FROM DI SoOURce
Wi stewardship stand up strong pon shared values, bringing on-call, trauma-informed heart-and-body care to heal wi people and lift up di collective.
We center indigenous Taino, Maroon, Afrakan, and Rastafarian rootwork across all wi ceremonies, coaching, consultation, and gatherings. Reclaiming wi ancestral ways is a radical, necessary act—one that grows spirals of deep wellbeing to break down and mend the heavy damages of colonial and patriarchal systems. Through ancestral wisdom and raw, transparent truth, we honor wi communities' grief while walking the path to true restoration and collective redemption.
Growing Wi Roots of Justice
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Somatic Liberation & Crisis Response: On-call, heart-and-body trauma care that reaches our people exactly when they need it. We step in with immediate, responsive care that calms the nervous system and stabilizes families navigating heavy grief and systemic pressure.
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Emotional Sovereignty "Pon Your Own Terms": Reclaiming complete ownership over your own mind, body, and feelings. Through responsive, somatic care, our people break free from generational trauma and anxiety, walking in radical peace, confidence, and self-mastery.
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Preservation of Ancestral Tech: Keeping the ancient ways alive and strong. We safeguard and practice indigenous Taino, Maroon, Afrakan, and Rastafarian rootwork through active ceremonies, consultations, and land cultivation so these healing lineages never die out.
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Digging Out Colonial Harm: We don’t just patch up symptoms; we dig out the root causes. Our coaching and community gatherings actively break down the heavy mental and physical weights of colonial and patriarchal regimes, replacing isolation with radical truth.
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Weaving di Whole Ecosystem: Connecting the dots between personal healing and collective strength. From deep-dive personal coaching to organizational consultations, we build a continuous circle of wellbeing that locks community resilience in place from the inside out.
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Clear-Eyed Stewardship & Accountability: Deeply rooted accountability to the people we serve. We ensure that every resource, seed, and dollar flows straight into real community care, collective healing, and shared redemption.
Vision Circle
As a network of BIPOC women, LBQT gender expansive peoples and accomplices, we envision opportunities for emotional safety, mutual support, solidarity economics, and inclusiveness for all aspects of life on planet earth.
Solidarity team L-R: Afe, Shawn, JaDiel, Tae; Front: Justice, Afia
We nuh just manage the land; we listen to it. Our team is a collective of ancestral healers, climate educators, master organic growers, and culture-keepers dedicated to growing a self-sustaining future from the root up.
Afia Walking Tree | Founding Principal Steward & Master Drum-Medicine Facilitator
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An internationally acclaimed percussionist, certified permaculturist, and visionary who continues to dream Solidarity into being. Afia masterfully connects people to regenerate themselves through the deep wisdom of all living systems—from our own bodies and the raw earth to the living waters, the air, spirit, ancestors, and foundational riddims. By blending active earth stewardship with African Diasporic drum medicine, she weaves a continuous loop of deep somatic healing and creates gender-expansive land sanctuaries where our communities can safely rest, restore, and rise.
Trinity Watkins | Somatic Care Practitioner & Principal Hub Operations Steward
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A foundational anchor who has been with Solidarity Yaad since our inception. As a core steward, she masterfully transforms our operations into accessible systems that enable the entire collective to function as one. Trinity brings a deep wealth of experience in community care, having anchored trauma-informed environments for boys in group homes, and bridges this dedication with Kundalini Yoga and responsive heart-and-body processing to help our people claim true emotional sovereignty.
Laurie Lynn Hogan | Humans Connect: Epic Trails Practitioner & Strategic Fund Sustainability Steward
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A founding cornerstone who has championed Solidarity Yaad from its very inception. As a core steward, she masterminds our financial resilience, intergenerational funding models, and ancestral resource pathways. Laurie Lynn weaves deep human connection through every layer of our ecosystem—guiding our Trust (our governing board), nurturing our relationships with funders and grant partners, and leading immersive trail journeys that ground us in the living forest.
N. Dixon | Lead Grounds Steward & Farmer
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A seasoned Jamaican farmer cultivator, land care techician and animal husandry.
Nigel Duffus | Operations, Production, Procurement & Transportation
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Our systems and distribution wizard managing the complex dance of farm production, tool/material/equipment procurement, logistics, and harvest distribution.
Kier Blake | Lead Finance Steward
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A justice-oriented numbers anchor balancing our economic stewardship and organizational financial frameworks and managing our financial wellness.
Our Seasonal Stewards | Di Extended Farm Family
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A dynamic, ever-evolving collective of local gender expansive women, gender elders, youth, male allies, apprentices, and neighborhood hands who breathe daily energy into our fields, sharing in the collective labor and the fruits of the harvest.
Our
Story
"Every Mickle Mek a Muckle"
Jamaican proverb speaks to the impact
that small things, when combined, one by one, can have a significant effect on the whole.
COLLABORATORS & SUPPORTERS
Our movement is 100% community funded. Since 2015, we have been growing radical feminist solutions alongside women, queer, trans, lesbian, and gender expansive survivors of gender based violence (GBV) in Jamaica. Our first name Raise Yuh Voice Jamaica, provided embodied somatic, healing soft spaces for survivors to tell their stories.
We knew that emotional and spiritual healing needed to be grounded and embodied in indigenous ancestral knowing and earth connections. Our visioning circle widened to embrace our larger vision and in October 2021, our community raised over $100,000 to embody this vision and moved on to our first 12.5 acre farm. We have been growing earth connections, food security, economic resources, and wellness. The first farm had no built structures and with pandemic inflation and 2024 Hurricane Beryl, we had to embrace what more sustainable infrastructures could look like. In 2024, we reached into our community and began our campaign for a built homebase of operations with infrastructure to support our growth. We were fortunate to be approached by our elder neighbor adjacent to our farm who was selling the home he built in 1970 and the 12.5 acre farm. Together, with over 100 supporters, by December 2025 we raised over $400,000 USD to acquire the farm, and to sustain our operations for our move into the new hub. We had lots of work ahead of us as the house needed a lot of love. We moved into the hub in March 2026, and since have been cleaning, clearing, and renovating the spaces. Thank you to our beloved communities who believe in our vision to be an impactful resource in the world.
We are proud to partner with local and global collaborators and donors invested in rematriating and rewilding our lands and ourselves.
VDAY/One Billion Rising, Meadows Livingstone School, WeChange Jamaica; Transwave Jamaica, Seacole Hall @ University of the West Indies, I'm Glad I'm A Girl Foundation, Institute of Jamaica, Global Village Farms, Earth Activist Training, Earthlodge Center for Transformation, Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity & Equity, Caribbean Women & Sexual Diversity Conference, Caribbean Commslab, Wend Collective, Landing Justice, Allied Media Projects, Grounding Truths, Echo Valley Farm, African American Policy Forum, Comfrey Films, Astrea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Equality Fund, Bioneers Every Woman's Leadership, African American Policy Forum, Comfrey Films, Soul Flower Farm, R.O.O.T.S. Permaculture, New Economy Coalition, MamaCash, Coleen Stevens, V Ensler, Penny Livingstone & Regenerative Design Institute, Judy Helfand & Pam Bates, Polly Howells, Diane Dodge, Carolyn Hunt, Cile Beatty, Laura Slatterly, and several anonymous donors, and hundreds of friends who continue to support our mission to center care and communal learning that fosters long term protection of the underserved Jamaican communities and our land through various liberatory and regenerative practices.
2016
60
3000
$2,000,000
Year Established
Projects Completed
Community Members Served
Funds Raised
GALLERY
CONTACT
Inquiries
For any inquiries, questions or commendations, please call: 8765459900 or fill out the following form
Our Location
We are 40 minutes from Ocho Rios, St. Ann Parish, Jamaica
Tel: 876-545-9900
Contact Us
Employment & Volunteer Residencies
To inquire about our farm tour, a steward position, as a volunteer, or be a short-term resident with Solidarity Yaad Jamaica, please complete our Visitors Interest Form.
We are a learning laboratory and we are especially interested in building intentional community that aligns with our vision and mission, and values. We will respond to your inquiry. We are a small team with a huge vision. Give us a few weeks. Many blessings to you.
For a position or residency, send a cover letter together with your C.V. to: solidarityfarmsja@gmail.com.
OPEN POSITIONS
Operations Manager Position Available
Opens August 2025 until hired