Fatra pa Egziste Contest
049 SOIL has launched a new contest for kids in northern Haiti called "Fatra pa Egziste" (garbage does not exist).  For the contest, participants are asked to find something that someone else has thrown away and transform it into something beautiful, or something useful.  The contest was launched in November 2007 in Shada, one of the most impoverished communities in the world.  Two weeks later the children of Shada once again demonstrated that material poverty has no relation to poverty of intellect.  Twenty nine children submitted brilliant entries from sandals made of cardboard, plastic bags and used cloth to functional cooking stoves made from tin cans.
SOIL plans to do this project throughout Cap Haitien choosing three finalists from each neighborhood.  The finalists will then be asked to make another submission for the grand finale/exposition which will be held in the public square.  Winners in the final competition will be given all of the materials that they need to produce their invention, including marketing and sales support, allowing the participants to develop small businesses. Fatra pa Egziste simultaneously promotes creative reuse of wastes and empowers individuals to engage in changing their reality. For photos of contest entries see: Shada, Cap Haitien

Intake center for street kids in Carenage, Cap Haitien
Liberation ecology, transformation and the philosophical roots of Fatra pa Egziste
In nature soil transforms organic matter, sustaining ecological systems by converting one organism’s wastes into another’s resources. It is from the soil that our organization has borrowed both our name and our philosophy. We too, believe that the path to sustainability is through transformation, of both marginalized people and discarded materials, turning disempowerment and pollution into participatory production. The social element of our philosophy has also been deeply influenced by the liberation theology movement. Liberation theology is a school of thought, developed among Latin American Catholics, according to which the Gospel demands the church to liberate the people from poverty and oppression. Liberation theology in practice is based on a sincere faith in humanity and a willingness to stand with the poor in their struggle for justice. Justice implies more than a short term fulfillment of needs based on dependency. It implies a commitment to social change whereby the poor are liberated from their suffering in this lifetime through active participation in, and transformation of, their reality. The concept of waste presents an important parallel between ecology and liberation theology, and it is at this intersection that SOIL’s philosophy of liberation ecology is based.  The dictionary defines waste as leftover or superfluous, rejected as useless or worthless. Both ecological theory and liberation philosophies challenge this traditional concept of waste, through the idea that all that exists is transformable.  In ecological systems one organism’s waste may nourish and sustain an entire food chain through a series of molecular transformations.  Liberation theology shares this conceptualization of waste at the social, rather than biological level. It is a school of thought which recognizes the humanity and worth of every person, affirming the capacity of those who have been marginalized and oppressed.  It is in this philosophical spirit that the Fatra pa Egziste contest was developed.