Renowned St Lucia Photographer Kirk Elliott recently earned certification in NGO Professional Management from the University of the West Indies Open Campus.
For the past four years Elliott has been mentoring the Fond Gens Libre Development Committee as it seeks to both develop and enhance the community’s tourism product. Fond Gens Libre is a community at the base of Gros Piton comprising of 109 residents living in 42 households. Residents are reputed to be descendants of Saint Lucia’s Freedom Fighters who rejected slavery hundreds of years ago and in the process established this strategic stronghold. Today many of these residents earn a living as tour guides accompanying hikers up the Gros Piton. Gros Piton is the larger and taller of Saint Lucia’s iconic Pitons which form part of the Piton Management Area (PMA). The PMA was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003 and added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 2004.
Elliott has helped the community establish an executive arm which was registered with the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice, Empowerment, Youth Development, Sports and Local Government as a Community Based Organization in 2017. This paved the way for the community to receive a Planning Grant from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Environmental Fund’s (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) to assist with its sustainable community based tourism initiative.
“Because NGO Management is outside my area of expertise I jumped at the opportunity to pursue this course of study when Mr. Giles Romulus, Saint Lucia National Coordinator for UNDP circulated a request for applications to SGP grantees.” explained Elliott when asked how as a photographer he came to pursue this course. The course introduced Elliott to the history of Caribbean NGOs as well as the unique challenges they face. The course, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) was open to persons across the Caribbean working with NGOs.
