The Centre de Culture Populaire Ypiranga de Pastinha (CCYPM) association has grown a garden assembling 170 medicinal and nutritive plants. The collection of plants is organised according to the ailments they heal, and explains the medicinal properties of each of them in an area accessible to visitors free of charge.

The association is also dedicated to grow these medicinal and nurturing plants for the benefit of oldest members of local families and unemployed people who live nearby. Located in a suburb of the main city of Fort-de-France, the garden is integrated in the north mountainous quarters of “Trenelle-Citron” slum, an area built by people who came from the rural areas in the 1940s, and facing important economic and social challenges nowadays.

The association teaches unemployed young people and thanks to the BEST project has recruited workers who were under conditional liberty or just finished their detention for taking care of the garden.

In parallel to the development of the garden, the CCPYM offers training plans which have been developed with the support of a botanical expert from Brazil. These trainings, attended by public and private actors, include botanical courses, as well as techniques of cultivation and preparation of remedies.

Collaborations have been developed by the association: locally, with two main experts of Martinique and with the Martinique Botanical Conservatory who has transferred medicinal plants and regionally for duplication of the project in Guadeloupe while working with the TRAMIL organization (Program of Applied Research to Popular Medicine in the Caribbean) that is very active in the Caribbean region.

* “Plantothèque-école médicinale de proximité en Martinique” is a 12-month project funded by BEST RUP which has been designed, developed and managed by the Centre de Culture Populaire Ypiranga de Pastinha Martinique for a total of €50,000.