Upcoming Projects:

Upcoming Projects

Ecological Sanitation Demonstration Sites

The first demonstration sites have been a wonderful success and generated a great deal of local interest. SOL currently has requests pending from SOL currently has requests pending from Roche a Bateau in the Southeast, and numerous communities around Cap Haitien in northern Haiti. Our dream is to have demonstration sites in all 10 of Haiti’s departments, as educational tools and prototypes for how to transform waste from a dangerous pollutant to a valuable resource.

We plan to put in place demonstration sites in rural areas throughout the country as funding becomes available. We are starting this week with the community of Borgne where we will be building a large public dry toilet and 30 arborloos along the beach.
The Haitian government is gearing up to initiate a large scale sanitation program. Our goal is to have as many sites in place as possible before this program gets underway so that communities will have a sense of all of the options available before choosing a sanitation strategy that works for their region.

Shada Ecological Sanitation Project

Shada is a community in Cap Haitien which is located directly alongside the river which flows through town. The community is densely populated with approximately 15,000 people living in desperate poverty. The majority of the children suffer from malnutrition exacerbated by waterborne illness, and many do not live beyond the age of five.

Although it is located in Haiti’s second largest city, the community of Shada has no access to sanitation facilities. The only toilets which exist in the community are small makeshift shacks built on the edge of the river with holes in the floor that empty directly into the water below, and even these are locked and inaccessible to the majority of the community. People have to resort to leaving the community to relieve themselves or using buckets in their homes which are later emptied into the river. Children go to the bathroom in the piles of garbage that line the riverbank. Several international organizations have attempted to alleviate this problem by building public latrines in the community, but the water table is too high and within weeks the latrines fill with water creating even more serious hygiene problems.

SOL is proposing to initiate a pilot sanitation project in Shada in 2007 to address the sanitation and hygiene crisis faced by the community. The pilot program will include 10 large public dry toilets. The program will not only incorporate an education campaign and ecological toilets, but also provide short term employment for more than 150 community members.

Public Toilet at Palace San Souci in Milot

The Palace San Souci is a 200 year old historic monument in Milot. With the launching of a new tourism initiative focused on Milot, SOIL has partnered with the mayor’s office to begin construction of a large public pay toilet near the palace. The toilet will be available to both tourists and the public.

The toilet in Milot will serve two purposes. First, and most obviously, it will provide critical sanitation services at a tourist sight, services which are presently unavailable. Secondly the toilet will serve as a promotional tool for SOIL and SOL. The organizations will place literature in the bathroom so that tourists visiting Milot can learn more about the program.

SOL also plans to put in several more toilets on the route leading from the palace to the Citadel.